REPO R.TRESUMES ED 011 626 AC 000 505/ URBAN DECISION MAKING THE FINDINGS FROM A CONFERENCE (CHICAGO, NOVEMBER 5 -12, 1965). APPLICATIONS OF HUMAN RELATIONS LABORATORY TRAINING, NUMBER 1, 1967. BY- FRANKLIN, RICHARD FRANKLIN, PAULA NATIONAL TRAINING LABS., WASHINGTON, D.C. PUB DATE 67 EORS PRICE MF$0.18 HC -$3.92 98P.

DESCRIPTORS *URBAN AREAS, *DECISION MAKING, *COMMUNITY CHANGE, *LEADERSHIP TRAINING, *TRAINING TECHNIQUES, SOCIAL CHANGE, CITIZEN PARTICIPATION, TRAINING LABORATORIES, RESEARCH METHODOLOGY, ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED, POWER STRUCTURE, COMMUNITY ACTION, URBAN EXTENSION, COMMUNITY LEADERS, PROBLEM SOLVING, EVALUATION TECHNIQUES, CASE STUDIES (EDUCATION), TABLES (DATA), FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS, DISTRICTOF COLUMBIA

THIS NATIONAL TRAINING LABORATORIES (NTL) CONFERENCE, DEPARTING SOMEWHAT FROM ITS USUAL EXPERIENCE -BASED LEARNING PROGRAMS, FOCUSED LABORATORY TRAINING METHODS ON THE DECISION - MAKING PROCESS IN URBAN COMMUNITY PROBLEM SOLVING. THE CONFERENCE PRESENTED THEORY, INFORMATION, AND OPINION ON THE NATURE OF CITIES AND THEIR DECISION- MAKING PROCESSES. GROUPS OF PARTICIPANTS STUDIED THE RATIONAL - TECHNICAL - SOCIAL PROCESS FRAMEWORK OF DECISION MAKING AND FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS, AND A CONCEPT OF FORCES FOR CHANGE VERSUS RESTRAINING FORCES. PARTICIPANTS DEALT WITH TWO APPROACHES TO SOCIAL CHANGE - -THE CONFLICT - OPPOSITIONAL STRATEGY AND THE COLLABORATION - INTEGRATIVE STRATEGY ONE GROUP EXAMINED WAYS OF ENLISTING MAXIMUM FEASIBLE PARTICIPATION OF THE POOR IN URBAN DECISION MAKING, ESPECIALLY IN THE WAR ON POVERTY. FINDINGS WERE CONSOLIDATED AND RECOMMENDATIONS MACE ON MORE EFFECTIVE APPROACHES TO URBAN CHANGE. PARTICIPANTS PLANNED HOW THEY WOULD INFLUENCE CHANGE IN THEIR OWN COMMUNITIES. A FINAL EVALUATION OF THE CONFERENCE WAS MACE BY PARTICIPANTS. THE DOCUMENT INCLUDES NINE REFERENCES, CASE STUDIES OF SEVERAL CITIES, DISCUSSION TRANSCRIPTS AND OTHER RECORDS, AND APPENDIXES. THIS DOCUMENT IS ALSO AVAILABLEFROM NATIONAL TRAINING LABORATORIES, 1201 SIXTEENTH STREET, N.W., WASHINGTON, B.C. 20036, FOR $3.50. (LY) 7,-

Applications of Human Relations Laboratory Training

1967 HUMOR 1 URBAN DECISION MAKING THE FINDINGS FROM A CONFERENCE November 5-12, 1965/Chicago, Illinois

0 I0

.. NATIONAL TRAINING LABORATORIES NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE

OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT. POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS

STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. APPLICATIONS OF HUMAN RELATIONS LABORATORYTRAINING

Number One-1967

URBAN DECISION MAKING- THE FINDINGS FROM A CONFERENCE

by

Richard and Paula Franklin

With contributions from:

Edwin C. Banfield John E. Bebout Harry C. Bredemeier Linton C. Freeman Donald Klein H. Curtis Mial

The Urban Decision- Making Conference was held in Chicago, Illinois, November 5-12, 1965, under the auspices of NATIONALTRAINING LABORATORIES, and supported by a grant from BOWMAN C. LINGLETESTAMENTARY TRUST.

The Training Staff was composed of

W. C. Dutton Richard Franklin Donald Klein Charles P. Livermore H. Curtis Mial Edward Moe Hans B. C. Spiegel Roland Warren

Published by

NATIONAL TRAINING LABORATORIES NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 1201 Sixteenth Street, N. W. Washington, D. C. 20036

Single Copy-$3.50 DEDICATION

Should we fall short,

It's not that we do not reach

But that our vision is not long enough;

Yet surely our arms are strong enough

To embrace all those who live

Along our peopled streets.

-- Richard Franklin TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

1 1. INTRCDUCTION, by H. Curtis Mial

. 8 2. METROPOLIS U.S.A.: SCREECHING PROBLEMS AND UNBRAKED GROWTH .

13 3. UNDERSTANDING TEE CITY AS A CHANGINGSCCIAL SYSTEM

"American Cities as Social Systems," by John E. Bebout and Harry C.Bredemeier 13

23 4. CASE STUDIES FRCM METROPOLITANCENTERS

. 23 Case I: "Leadership in Syracuse," by Linton C.Freeman .

An Attempt at Application of theTheory 34

Case II: "Political Influence and Controlin Chicago, by Edward C. Banfield 35 50 5. ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKS FOR TEEPRACTITIONER

. 50 Group I: The Rational-Technical-SocialProcess Framework . 54 Group II: The Force Field Framework 58 6. TWO DECISION-MAKING STRATEGIES 58 The Conflict-OppositionalStrategy 60 The Collaboration-IntegrativeStrategy 64 7. COMMUNITY ACTION IN THE WAR ONPOVERTY 67 8. IMPROVING URBAN DECISION-MAKINGPRCCESSES ......

. 68 Salient Considerations inUnderstanding Decision Making

. . 70 Improving Urban Decision Making:Some Suggested Approaches. 72 9. LOOKING HOMEWARD

APPENDIX

A. The Conference Schedule Expectations," by B. "Conference Outcomes in Termsof Participants' Donald Klein

Afterthoughts on the Conference C. Planning for Learning -

D. Roster of Participants andStaff

"...,.."-4.0"....",-,,11.111--"-- INTRODUCTION

I. General Background

"(This conference) has reinforcedmy belief that we need to take a whole new look at our urban areas and devise entirely new ways of analysis, presentation, and effectuation."

"This work conference has been especially influential in developing a particular awareness of the conditions, problems and consequences of the process of urban decision making when they take place in communities representing different degrees of complexity and social xganization.'

"The conference has laid bare the whole decision- making process... but also on a much broader basis. ...has tended to clarify some otherwise cloudy situations to which I have been too close to view clinically."

"Motivation is tremendously increased to be a responsible member of the community and to partic- ipate more intelligently in community decisions."

"For good or bad, the conference--for me, the learner-- has forced me in disfavoring and initiating an active role. I don't know whether to thank you or not. The political and organizational implications of complex city systems and the ultimate dilemmas were particu- larly engaging without leaving me with any desires for a Utopia."

"(Have gained) increased appreciation of how fumbling we are in attempts to learn from each other."

"Has increased my understanding of the values, knowledge and attitudes of the people involved in urban problems--especially the new breed of 'revo- lutionaries.' I am more convinced than ever that I personally would like to involve myself in planned social change."

On November 5 - 12, 1965, at the Continuing Education Center of the University of Chicago, the National Training Laboratories sponsored its first urban decision-making Work Conference. The report that follows provides a detailed description of this conference. It was in many ways a departure for NTL from its usual experience-based learning programs; yet in another way it represented a logical growth and development in the efforts of NTL's Community Program to enable problem solving at the local community level to become more effective. Since 1960 when NTL initiated at Bethel, Maine, its first Community Leadership Development Laboratory, community-oriented members. of NTL staff and of the Fellows and Associates of NTL have worked at application of laboratory methods and T-Group theory to community problem solving. (Com- munity laboratories were started in 1962 in Utah, in 1965 in Georgia, in 1966 in North Carolina.) A number of local training programs have resulted in several urban communities. The Urban Decision-Making Conference in Chicago, however, was the first effort to combine NTL laboratory methods with a focus on one of the most important dimensions of urban community problem solving -- the decision-making process.

The conference probably raised more uuestions than it answered; everyone--participants, staff, consultants--went away with questions and some serious criticisms. But as indicated by the quotations above, the conference succeeded in some ways for nearly all of the participants to help them to come to a better understanding of what is involved in urban decision making and what some of the dimensions are that must be dealt with if urban decision making is to be improved. As one staff member put it, most of the participants 'went away excited, informed, stimulated to further activity, and very appreciative of the opportunity." Since NTL is planning further steps in the area of urban decision making, it is impor- tant to transmit as effectively as possible the details of this first experience. This report attempts to do this

II. The Urban Community Today

There is no need to describe here at great length the conditions of urban communities throughout the United States. There are many commen- tators on the urban scene. They all seem to agree that there is a very serious and critical problem as represented by the urban community--a cankersore in our booming, affluent American society.Whether the com- mentator be an educator, an economist, a businessman, a labor leader,a government administrator; whether he be "hard-nose" or "soft-nose"; whether he be professional or volunteer; whether he be from the private sector or public sector; whether he be from the local level, the state level, or the federal level; whether he be an ivory-tower theoretician or a revolutionary activist "from the streets," all of the commentators agree that there is a problem.How to attack the problem, how to deal with it, how to cope with it, how to do something productive and effective about it, is another story on which there is little consensus. The titles of the books being written give some feeling of the seriousness and depth of the problem. Titles such as, "The Exploding Metropolis," "The Urban Condition," "Crisis in Our Cities," "The Good City," "The Urban Complex," "The Other America," "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

Going behind the titles with a few examples will illustrate again the seriousness of the problem. Lewis Herber, for example, in "Crisis in Our Cities," describes his book as contending "that we are destroying the very urban world on which our intellectual and physical well-being depend. Paradoxically, we are destroying this basis by enlarging it to a point where it can no longer be managed, indeed, where it threatens to turn into a purely malignant force, an all-encompassing threat to urban civilization and urban man." (Publisher, Prentice-Hall, 1965.) Leonard Duhl in "The Urban Condition," page D-1, iii in theintroduction, states that "it is one thesis of this book that the crisis of urbanizationof America is a crisis of size, of complexity, and of the large andvaried administrative structures that are around us.As such one cannot deal with it in parts. Many have bitterly attacked size and asked for a return to a more rural pattern or patterns that are moresensibly comprehended. Much as this return appeals to our sensibilities and to someof our values, it is impossible to turn the clock back or tostop the process which has resulted in this mass of organized complexity.What is now needed is a new way of viewing complexity, ofviewing bigness and unraveling confu- sion." (Published by Basic Books, Inc., 1963.)Lawrence Haworth, in "The Good City," closes his philosophical look at theurban community today with this statement: "The idea of a good city is the idea of the form the urbanized nation should take.Power, freedom, and community define a national ideal fully as much as they define an idealfor city metropolis or megalopolis. As the nation grows increasingly urban, the value of its development will be measured by the extent towhich urban life becomes rich, open and person-centered; flexible, voluntaryand controllable--above all by the extent to which it becomes acommunity." (Published by the Indiana University Press, 1963.)

When NTL initiated its first community leadership training laboratory in 1960, it had been working for 13 years providing trainingand research on more effective leadership, on moreeffective group membership, and on methods of change in a democratic society. NTL had been encouraged by leaders in various fields to provide specialized training programsfor industry, for church, for education, for national organizationexecutives, and for other specialized groups. In 1960, NTL after two years of study and analysis, decided to consider the question, "Can NTL experience be used to develop more effective community leadership?" The Advisory Task Force, made up of representatives of many communityinterests and points of view which helped NTL to organize the community leadershiplaboratory, identified two major goals, as follows:

1. That a first training laboratory should be held, an experimental laboratory attempting to try out and test out methods and procedures based on NTL's previous experience, but at the same time recognizing that the community was quite a different environment than either the small group or the organization.

2. It was agreed that this first experimental effort at the national level should be preliminary to extending the training program as quickly as possible to the regional and local community level. It was recognized that the experiment must include training at the local level if eventually there were to be a spreading of the training and the achieving of considerable impact.

During the five years since 1960, the Community Leadership Labora- tories and various local training programs attempted to carry out these two goals. In dealing with the second goal, that of bringing training down to the local community level, there were several specialized aspects of community problem solving which were identified as needing special attention. One of these was the area of decision making.

At its 1965 winter meeting the NTL Community Program Advisory Com- mittee considered the idea of a special program in urban decision making. As in any first effort, the all-important problem of funding represented a road block. It was at this point that Kendall Lingle offered to secure funding for a first urban decision-making work conference from the Bowman C. Lingle Trust in Chicago.With this offer of help, NTL was able to move ahead.

With help from the Advisory Committee, the NTL Community Program Cori,- Staff committee became the primary planning group for the Urban Decision- Making Conference. One of the first ideas to emerge was that the focus should be on team participation. It was felt important to work toward the goal of fairly good-sized teams of 8 to 12 people from each community that could be as representative as possible of the key decision-making elements in the community. It was felt that if this could be achieved, there would be maximum transfer from the conference itself to the back-home applica- tion level. fter carefully considering this idea, the planning committee abandoned it as a first step. It was felt that this could not be achieved without a great deal of involvement and that preceding this step, there should be an initial conferende in which participants were invited prima- rily as individuals -- two, or three or four from each community whenever possible. 'They would not, however, be thought of as a team but would come primarily as individuals. If some "teamness" could be achieved, this would be all to the good. In the second-thase conference, teams of 8, 12 or 15 would be the objective.

III. Urban Decision- Making Conference Number One

With the decision to focus on a phase-one conference involving a small number of individuals from a fairly large number of communities, the planning began to take more definite shape. The following goals were identified:

1. To increase understanding, confidence, and interest of partic- ipants--both as individuals and as teams--and to provide opportunity for them to discover, experiment with and initiate more effective urban decision making through:

a Reexamination of decision-making processes in metropolitan communities in relation to:

1. Rise of new elements of power and influence.

2. Emergence of massive, federally-supported attempts to deal with problems (e.g., delinauency; poverty, economic development, automation and retraining, renewal and redevelopment, community mental health). .vs

3. Threatened breakdown of citizen participation in decision-making process (citizens want to be represented and involved in decision making, but increasingly are being denied opportunities to participate).

4. Emergence of new structure in response to need to attack problems across existing boundary lines.

b Analysis of the new and broader interpretations of urban problems and consideration of some of the more promising alternatives that are beginning to emerge (e.g., relationships between emerging community organization structures and exist- ing structure)

c. Need to examine present research theory and findings rela- tive to these processes and problems (the role of the university will be critical here).

2. To explore present and potential uses of behavioral science theory and research findings through training; consultation and research in an attempt to improve level of decision making and to raise level and quality of citizenship participation.

a. Each team in the Work Conference will become a unit and will develop materials on issues and problems in their community prior to the conference for use during the vnference.

b. The conference will be built around the issues and problems that cut across the experience of the community teams par- ticipating with exploration and analysis by staff and partic- ipants.

A great deal of thought was given to the types and variety of participants that it will be possible to include in this type of Work Conference. Finally four types were identified as follows: A. Content=17mn Consultants Two outstanding authorities on the urban community would be invited to participate, each one fora two-day period. This two-day period would be divided as follows:

1. A part of the day to meet the participants informally and get the feeling of what is going on.

2. A formal presentation of his theory or model of urban decision making.

3. The balance of the two days to clarify and analyze his model in intensive interaction with the consultant-participants and the participants.

5

AL_ B. Consultant Participants

Four consultant participants would be invited whowill be primarily practitioners--individuals whoare actively involved currently in projects and programs of various kinds relatedto the significant issues and problems of the urban community. They should provide a criti- cal counterbalance to the consultants describedabove. Their function would be that of reality testing, of helping to relateinputs of the consultants to the goals of the LDMC, of testing thetheoretical models advanced by the consultants against the pressingneeds, problems and road- blocks encountered in urban situations in thearea of decision making.

C. Participants

Participants will be individuals who are communityrelated and who are actively involved in community problem solving. Two to five individuals from a single community will forma community group. The expectation is that 10- 15 communities will be represented.The indi- viduals in these groups should havea relationship or potential relation- ship to one or more universities in their communities. They should have a potential for becoming--in the second phase of this project (aWork Conference to be held in the summer or fall of 1966)--fully-integrated teams representing the key decision-makers of theircommunities.

D. NTL Training Staff

The NTL Training Consultant will ba drawn primarily fromthe behavioral scientists most intensively involved in theNTL Community Leadership Training Program.

IV. The Report

This brief introduction provides a background for thereport that follows. To assure the preparation of a report, basedon adequate data collection; it was decided that Richard Franklin wouldplay a special role during the conference and afterwards. He devoted himself to gather- ing data during the general sessions, to extensivenote taking both during the general sessions and in the specialsmall-group sessions of various kinds, and also during the staff planningsession. Armed with tapes and his personal notes following theconference, he enlisted the skilled services of his wife, Paula Franklin, andtogether they wrote the.report.

The Table of Contents gives the structure of the report, andthe Appendix provides the Conference Schedule and theRoster of Participants and Staff. Also in the Appendix, the authors have included "after- thoughts" on the conference, which providea thought-provoking and stimulating conclusion. The Franklins call .attention tosome of the training issues involved in the conference, the differingexpectations of staff and participants, the dilemmas faced by thestaff in attempt- ing to confront these issues and expectations. As this introduction

6-

...... 1.,,...neernilKM1111111111111FFSET.- 1 'No

is written (just before the report is published) it is important to report that further steps are being planned to carry further what NTL believes to be an important effort to apply the resources of NTL--the strengths of laboratory method itself combined with the experience and skills of the behavioral scientists, the Fellows and Associates of NTL- - to one important dimension of any effort designed to build "the good city," namely the process of urban decision making.

-7 IMM 2. METROPOLIS U.S.A.: SCREECHING PROBLEMS AND UNBRAKED GROWTH

A participant from Cincinnati o' Salt Lake City could find an analogue between his arrival in Chicago and the Urban Decision Making Conference. From his plane window he saw a sweep of the lake front, the towers of the Loop, streets radiating endlessly onto the prairie. This was the grand scope, the metropolis entire.Thirty minutes later, his view was less panoramic: a row of brown brick apartments here, a cloud-piercing skyscraper, slum tenements a few blocks farther on, finally the silhouetted pillars of the University of Chicago's Continua ing Education Center.

The conference, too, moved auickly from the large scope to the close-up. Dinner finished, Curtis Mial of the training staff began to describe the background to the conference and its proposed major themes: the city in the process of change, the dynamics of urban decision making which give impetus to this process, and a search to discover directions for improving these decisions.1/

The working procedures for the conference were elaborated. A balance was to be sought-, between theory and action,analysis of research and examination of participant experience; between evaluating yesterday's results and exploring new approaches for solving urban problems.This was to be a "conference of peers," whereeach was both teacher and learner. Hopefully, it was not to be simply absorption of what is known about the city and its means of making choices, but seven days for creative thinking. The conferees' experience and the theoreticians' knowledge were to mix together to yield new insights, hypotheses, behavioralalternatives. Such was the overview.

The focus shifted to the specific.- To provide a base line forwork later in the conference, the staff asked participants to meet in"community teams."There were groups of three or more persons from separate urban 1-0 centers from Boston to Los Angeles. Other members attending alone or in pairs formed another group.2/ The span of back-home occupations waswide, and doubtlessly affected the content of the conference.Among 36 partici- pantsand eight staff were civil rights campaigners and clergymen, business- men and college professors, socialresearchers and youth workers, urban planners and a labor leader, a state president of a women's organization, administrators in community action programs against poverty, officers from both private and public agencies or organizations, volunteers and profes- sional3, practicing theoreticians and theorizing practitioners.

1/See Chapter 1 for a fuller discussion of themes and objectives.

2/ Also represented were Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Midland (Michigan), Newark, Philadelphia, San Juan(Puerto Rico), St. Louis, Salt Lake City, and Syracuse. See Appendix D for a list participants. Each community group was asked to do two things:

1. List the four or five major issues which have arisen in their cities in the past five years.

2.. Looking into the future, list the four or five most important emerging issues which will require decision making in the next decade.

While neither a complete inventory of the issues in Americancities, nor in any way scaled in terms ofimportance, these lists warrant atten- tion as the first thoughts from a cross section of people cometogether out of a common concern for problems of urban life in the UnitedStates.

Recent Issues Emerging Issues 1960 1965 1975

Racial integration in housing, Social manipulation by community . education, local politics, groups from the top down; job opportunities; - -"elitism" vs.broadbased (demo- - -minority groups'expression cratic) representation in urban of desires for a "piece" of decision making; the Great Society; - -sharingresponsibility; --ghettos, which cause lack of communication and inter= Development of a regional action between people; apparatus an structure; - -lily-whiteneighborhoods and suburbs; - -"metro" government;

- -de factosegregated schools. - -"metro"planning;

Absence of effective represen- - -determining' alternatives and the tation of newcomers, under- "best" solution. advantaged groups, and minori- ties in decision-making centers. ,Water and air pollution.

Leadership proliferation and Increasing number of "out-of- change due to social changes; community" decisions, which affect nm.unffiy,bytecole federal - -ambivalenceof social roles, government; which need redefinition. - -ways toaccommodate to the federal Urban Renewal: reallocation government's influence in local of people, slum clearance affairs. and community rehabilitation. Civil rights in employment and Lack of community identity, or housing; sense o commune y; - -church-staterelationships; - -alienation through rapid change. Recent Issues Emerging Issues 1960 1965 1975

Population increase and mobil- ity, including rural to urban migration.

Federal-metro-local relation- - -continuing de facto segregation, ships in terms of finances, as white citizens become the "pre- services and standards. dominant minority" in the city;

The core city vs. proliferation - -acceleration of Negro minority of local governments or juris- aspirations. dictions in the surrounding metropolitan area; What to do about the people who fail to "keep up" educationally, technologi- - -home rule and the problem of cally, culturally, etc. the city's dependency on state and federal decision making; Lack of adequate public transporta- tion. --reapportionment, one man- one vote; The individual vs. the group;

- -archaic and insufficient - -social planning focused on the governmental structures. individual.

Unemployment Integrating rapid economic develop- ment into the local culture; - -the central city's declining industrial base; -.analyzing and restructuring jobs and professions so that thenecessary - -too low income for many skills can be learned in the shortest people to attain a decent possible period (as in World War II); style of living. - -automation; Air and water pollution. - -nongrowth of major industries. Fluoridation of city water. Implementation of the county Funding capital for improve- master plan, including renewal ments; e.g., civic auditorium, of the central business library, sewerage treatment district. plant, hall of justice, schools.

Corruption; e.g., in housing Increasing interrelationships of and county government. local issues and aims.

Inadequate transportation;e.g., How the new, emerging leadership neefor a public rapi ransit and the present power structure system; can accommodate to each other.

- -poor traffic control;

-10 - Recent Issues Emerging Issues 1960 1965 1975

--limited highway-expressway The development of cross-sectional network. age, etc.)communities.

Development and evaluation of Urban renewal in surrounding com- a master plan for the entire munities which will sap the city's county. economic-tax base.

Tense police-community Educational demands for more public annee or a FEE5751777=6-7=technical review board; training facilities, and junior colleges. --issue of a combined Police/ Firemen's Auxiliary. Political vs. civic collision course regarding communitydevelop- Inadeauate community/school ment, social welfare, United Givers mental health facilities. Fund, etc.

Low or unreliable standards of The issue of urban redevelopment performance in public services. (e.g., housinE77577EZE:777575br or the middle class? Unrelatedness between urban Frorr==-.nsocaTir..c, Rising aspiration for better quality educational and physical of public services and a higher level planning and decision making. of humanization of life in the city- - esthetically, technologically, economically and educationally.

Overlapping concerns appeared in the team records, and some1965 issues were expected to be with American cities in 1975.

Three practicing urban-change agents--Hans Spiegel,W. C. (Bud) Dutton, and Charles Livermore1/--were asked to react tothe team reports and to relate the issues posed to urban decision making. One point they made was that "no decision" with regard to problemsis afrequent variety of urban decision. An underlying question is whether to"get in the path of history and alter it" or to allow a state of drift.

Another issue was where does responsibility lie--in theprivate sector or public sector?Value conflicts were identified around questions of who should make decisions, which are the mostdesirable goals, and which organizational arrangements and processes willcreate the fully L functional city.

The panel underscored a reality already notedby participants: "Many of the decisions that we're concerned about do notremain in our urban

ifSee Appendix D for names and positions ofthe training staff. areas, but seem to be made at, the national level."National decisions, however, tend to come only after local pressures develop and cause poli- ticians at the federal level to move. One example is the creation of the new federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (which formally began operation while the conference was in progress). It was established to help urban centers, partly as a consequence of the demand communicated through many channels to Washington.The challenge for this Department now is to find effective moans to work with local governments, to help grass-roots groups find ways in which local-federal cooperationcan be attained in order to grapple with problems confronting cities.

In the other direction, concern was expressed for community develop- ment not only on a metropolitan basis, but also on a neighborhood basis. Here a relationship between neighborhood and federal government can already be seen struggling to emerge insome phases of the community action program against poverty.

The panel stressed the tremendous pressures upon cities caused "by increased concentration of people, by the increased expectations people have for things and of life in general, and by the complexity of institu- tional relationships."A serious crisis in decision-making centers exists at all levels--how do decisions get made?

Thus, context for looking at urban decision making was established-. the intermeshed human and technological issues ofan urban society. The fulcrum issue emerged as this: Can the process itself for seeking solutions be improved? Which citizens and groups should be involved? In what way?

a

-12 - 3. UNDERSTANDING TEE CITY AS A CHANGING SOCIAL SYSTEM

It is one thing to identify frustrations besetting American cities. It is ,,not so easy to probe for understanding of the nature of the city in which these problems occur, to try to grasp the forces at work both for change and stability, to seek to comprehend the city as a complex social system, a dynamic place in which problems arise, decisions are made, and goals are achieved or lost.

To work on these tasks, the conference initiated two procedures.

The first was to form four Work Groups, comprised of eight or nine participants selected for heterogeneity as to geographic home, occupation, and community concern. The Work Groups, beginning with the second ses- sion, became the core learning units. They met frequently for periods of up to two hours. Sometimes a staff member joined each group, more often not.A central conference objective became the development of these Work Groups so that members could share concerns, build internal trust as a base for open communication, pinpoint and utilize resources within each group, influence individual perspectives, and engage jointly in concep- tual and attitudinal growth.

The second procedure was to read and discuss Bebout and Bredemeier's "American Cities as Social Systems," 1/ as a common exposure to one provocative view of the nature of urbgh centers. This provided a spring- board for the Work Groups to begin to look at decision making as a process in a social system (or combination of systems) by which that system tries to deal with its problems.

While no attempt is made here to summarize the discussions, it is worth Toting that the paper, plus the Work Group interchanges, helped some participants to get a new or refreshed perceptionof aspects such as how the city functions as a "training center"(especially for the poor and disadvantaged), the major mechanisms bywhich the city adapts to its environment or integrates itself with related parts(or fails therein), the cruciality of human development, and the relation of the city to far more extensive geopolitical circles than its own incorporated limits.

The paper itself, in abbreviated form, isincorporated into this report partly because of its defiance of quick summarization, but especially because it was a cornerstone of the conference experience which produced later outcomes. A system is well integrated to the degree that its

1/Journal of the American Institute of Planners, May,1963 (Volume

XXIX, Number 2 . The authors state that the theoretical orientation of this paper stems chiefly from the works of Talcott Parsons. See especially Talcott Parsons and Neil G. Smelser, Economy and Society (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1956), asaap-FyEarry0. Bredemeier, and Richard M. Stephenson, The Analysis of Social Systems (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1962

13 -17

parts procure from one another the things they are specialized to need, and find acceptance from one another of the things they are specialized to produce. Integration and adaptation, then, are the same thing looked at from two different points of view. When we talk about the mechanisms by which units or systems adapt to one another, we are simultaneously talking about the mechanisms by which systems (or super-systems) are integrated. These mechanisms of adaptation/integration are mechanisms by which units procure from and dispose to other units. The question is: How do people and groups get what they want from other people and LJ, groups?

Mechanisms of Adaptation/Integration

Bebout and Bredemeier identify only four ways: coercive mechanisms, bargaining mechanisms, legal-bureaucratic mechanisms, and identification or solidarity mechanisms. Through coercive mechanisms one unit gets what it wants from another by so narrowing the second unit's alternatives that the latter has virtually no choice but to comply. Bargaining consists of trying to get something from someone by convincing him that his best chance of maximizing his profits (rewards minus costs) is to give it to you. By rewards we mean "anything and everything that people find grati- fying--love, respect, approval, loyalty, self-respect, sexual satisfac- tion, pride, a sense of accomplishment in doing something well--in addi- tion, of course, to such tangible things as money, houses, clothes, and so on.... Bargaining techniques of adaptation are at their farthest removed from coercion when both parties have the same number and auality of alternatives.... When the community regulates us for the sake of avoiding coercion or exploitation, we move away from bargaining toward the third mechanism of adaptation: legal-bureaucratic rules. Adaptive U success under the bargaining mechanism depends on bargaining power; under legal-bureaucratic mechanisms, it depends on being a member of a bureau- cracy or a legal order and on the conscientiousness with which units carry out their duties.

"The fourth mechanism of adaptation/integration, identification, is n 'the mechanism which causes you to give your children, parents, wives, husbands or friends what they want from you and to accept their outputs.' You do so because you 'identify' with them, in the sense of seeing and feeling them as extensions of yourself; so that, to have them indicate their needs to you is tantamount to your desire to satisfy them. Adaptive success herelof course, depends not on having bargaining power, and not on having bureaucratic or legal rights, but on being a member of asolidar- ity group whose other members care about you as an end in yourself."

A system is well-integrated "when the parts are sufficiently satisfied with what they are receiving from one another and sufficiently Satisfied U with one another's acceptance of their respective outputs that they do not attempt to change the relationship. In the same way, the system is well adapted toits environment when it is receiving as much as it wants from its environing systems, and when the environing systems are accepting the things the system wants to offer. When these conditions do not exist, there is disequilibrium or maladaptation. "In talking about the city's adaptive problems and activities, we are at the same time talking about the integration of the region and the nation; except that we are describing how those integrative problems look from the city's point of view.Moreover, we choose to focus on the city because, in today's political situation, the burden of action is in the first instance placed on cities, there being no central decision-making structure for regions. Our suggestion is that a careful analysis of just what cities can and cannot do in the present dispensation leads inexorably to the conclusion that they are in fact helpless by themselves, and that any ultimate solutions to 'urban problems' require the intervention of more inclusive systems."

The City Defined

Bebout and Bredemeier define a city as a system composed of its citi- zens. The city has three major environments: Its non-citizens, including those who add to its daytime or evening populations; other parallel social systems (which include other cities, suburbs, business organizations, the state university, the National Red Cross, the NAACP, and so on; and third, the more inclusive social systems of which It is a part--the county, the region, the state, the nation.From those environing systems the city needs goods and services and, from its superordinate systems, grants of authority as well.

"A city is essentially a piece of land the inhabitants of which happen, for a variety of historical, accidental reasons, to have been delegated certain decision-making powers. by the State. It differs from other pieces of incorporated land in its high density and the great heterogeneity of its population. These two related characteristics--density and hetero- geneity--are at the same time the source of the city's virtues and its vices. If the city is to bargain successfully for what it needs, its task is to maximize the advantages of density and heterogeneity and minimize the disadvantages."The city is also a corporation offering opportunities to people and groups to live, work, play, and learn, and seeking to expand such opportunities. 1/ The city's bargaining power for this has declined because people and business firms now have many alternatives, as a result of technological developments.The city is in an especially bad position because it has many commitments to people and groups who are, in a sense, trapped in it. The city now has difficulty meeting these commitments because its bargaining power with other people has been so attenuated.

If this problem is to be solved by bargaining (which seems doubtful), the problem becomes one of determining what the city has to offeras inducements. The city's resources include "its citizens.' skills and motivations, its land, and its external and internal transportation facilities--that is, the proximity of the city to the skills and markets of non-members and the proximity of various internal areas of the city

1/ Who actually makes the decisions in this "corporation" is, ofcourse, an important variable affecting the city's viability. We are not able to take up this issue within the confines of this paper.

15 to one another. All three resources are subject to improvement, atvary- ing costs and over varying time spans.That, we take it, is what urban renewal is all about. That is to say, the urban renewal effort is a three- fold effort--land renewal, transportation renewal, and humandevelopment-- all designed to improve the city's competitive position.

"In exactly what ways these resources should be renewedor developed depends primarily on the needs and demands of the people the city is trying to attract. Let us consider three kinds of people the city is potentially able to attract as residents: low-income people with children, middle- and upper-income people with children, and middle- and upper-income people without children. In addition, it is potentially able to attract certain non-residents (the city's so-called daytime population) and, in certain cases, special non-resident night-time or visiting populations."

The City's Function As Training Center

The current tendency is to wish that the city were not quiteso successful in competing for many-childrened, low-income residents; "but that may be too hasty a judgment--why not consider seriously the possi- bility that the city's function in society has changed and that a major service to the rest of the society at present and for the immediate future is to be a new kind of combination Ellis Island and training school for the receipt, training, and ultimate transshipment to the suburbs of under- privileged in-migrants?

"It is, in fact, an enormously important function that needs to be performed--certainly as important as the analogous function performed by families when they receive, train, and transship to other systems the barbarian invaders of each new generation or the similar function per- formed by schools and colleges in all areas.

"If, of course, the city is to perform that function for the larger society, the larger society must pay the cost. That means radically greater support of the city by the state and federal governments. There may be a tendency to wince away from this, but since the city is, in fact, a highly attractive magnet for disadvantaged people looking for a better life, there are really only three alternatives to the larger society's helping the city to accept responsibility for their care and training.

"One alternative is to restrict their mobility--which only throws the responsibility for them onto some other area.

"A second alternative is for the nation to move in the direction of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and allow the city to become the planned abode of semi-moronic Epsilons on whose backs the rest of us can enjoy a fairly plush existence, merely shuddering deliciously whenever we pass their hovels or their barracks. At least we might then bend our efforts toward making them satisfied with their lot, and less of a danger to the rest of us....

"Doing nothing, of course, is a third alternative but only a short- run one. It cannot go on for very long, for the simple reason that the

-16- failure of the city to give itsmembers what they need willnecessarily result in accentuation of the verydifficulties the city now findsitself in--the exodus of those peoplewho can afford to get out, andthe progres- sive worsening of thepathologies that are making thecity a combination jungle and almshouse."

We speak of the failure ofthe city to give its members"what they need." What do they need?People need four things: participat- (1) A sense of competentlydoing something important, of define as worthy, ing in activities or tasksthat they and their associates important, useful, respectable; toward the material and (2) A sense of making reasonable progress recreational goals they define asintrinsically enjoyable;

and appreciation by other people (3) A sense of personal acceptance with whom they identify in close,intimate circles; in author- (4) A sense that more distantpeople, strangers, and those ity, respect their rights andinterests.

If the structure of theworld is such that peoplecannot get what they illegitimately and un- need legitimately andproductively, they will do it time ago, human pathologies are productively.As James Plant said a long more often thannot the normal responses ofnormal organisms to abnormal conditions.

"People respond to opportunitydeficiencies either by violently striking out in such desperateefforts to compensate asasserting their racial superiority through BlackMuslim movements or WhiteCitizens Coun- dope addiction or other cils or by passivelywithdrawing into alcoholism, forms of sickness or by jealouslyseeking to monopolize forthemselves what scarce opportunitiesthey can get their hands on.

"The jungle and almshouse thatthe city is becoming is aperfectly predictable response to the way wehave shut off people'sopportunities. situation can only get If we do not open upopportunities for them, the worse, not better.

'What has to be done to avoidthis is to arrange thingsat least as he is trying to well as any experimentalpsychologist arranges them when teach new habits to non-humanactors--the essential trick being tomake unmistakably pays off, and sure that conformityto the new expectations nonconformity unmistakably doesnot pay off. At present we do not have dis- a ghost of a chanceof teaching the humanvictims of deprivation and that im- crimination new habits because wesimply do not guarantee them provement will pay off, and wemake it possible--evennecessary--for them to get pay-offswith 'deviant' habits.

"For example, we must askourselves to what extent thetenants of public housing projects feel a senseof importance, ofcompetence, of mattering, and of pleasure;and to what extent they feelregimented objects of charity." -17- Going on as we have is certain only to compound the problems. We are brought face to face with "the necessity for acceptance by the city of its function as an active training center." This is a necessary condition for human renewal. It is also a necessity if the city is to bargain success- fully for the other kinds of residents it wants; and it is necessary if it is to bargain successfully for industry.

Attracting the Upper Classes and Industry

. We quote at length from Bebout and Bredemeier:

"Any realistic hope of using some of the city's land for middle- or upper-income family housing must be based not only on realistic estimates of the cost of constructing the housing itself, the schools that must serve it, and the children's recreational areas that must surround it. It must also be based on the realization that people who fled the city in order to prevent their children from attending overcrowded schools with 'undesirable' elements are simply not coming back to integrated schools unless the schools are vastly improved. This is a real dilemma, but we do not escape it by closing our eyes to it, and it is not a simple matter of racial prejudice. White and Negro parents who are prejudiced against lower-class, undisciplined, stupid, white and Negro children are not going to send their children to school with them, no matter what the Supreme Court says--and no matter how many suits are started, as long as they have alternatives. And as long as they have the alternative of homogeneous suburban schools, the city has no bargaining power.Middle-class Negroes, when they have a genuine choice in the matter, will flee to the suburbs as fast as their white friends, if they feel that this is the best way to give their children a proper environment for growth.

"In this connection, we think there has been a tendency on the part of many, including some of the 'balanced neighborhood' advocates, to depreciate the real meaning of the Supreme Court's decision in the 1954 school segrega- tion case....1/ What worries us most about the 'balanced neighborhood' idea is that it can become an easy way of avoiding or diverting attention from our responsibility to underprivileged persons, the largest proportion of whom are Negroes, and it can be positively ruinous to our efforts to rebuild the city. It can be an easy formula of evasion by leading to the feeling that the job has been done when some Negroes are admitted to a previously all-white school; and it can be ruinous if it is interpreted to mean that one must send his children to school with a bunch of hoodlums as the price of a decision to live in Newark or Manhattan or St. Louis just because a large number of the hoodlums happen to be Negroes. The whole point about skin color is that it ought to be irrelevant. We suggest that the 'balanced neighborhood' notion be given a quick'burial. If we need a phrase, a much better one is the equal-opportunity-neighborhood, where opportunities are plentiful and equally available to all comers.

1/ Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 Supt. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954).

18 "If the city is to attract upper- and middle-incomefamilies, it has to meet their standards. One of their standards is the demand for goodand safe schools and sidewalks. If the city wants them back, the city cannot afford to mix them with the very groups they werefleeing, until the city has helped those groups to escape from the viciouscircle of deprivation- pathology-deprivation, etc And this is the same as sayingthat the city had better get on, quickly and energetically,with the job of human develop- ment.

"On the positive side, it seems to us that the citydoes have certain powerful attractions for bargaining counters, given agenuine opportunity to use them. The major value of a city as a living place ascompared to a rural area or a suburb, is that its density andheterogeneity permit it to offer an immense variety of goods and serviceswithin a very small area. As a living place, the city competeswith the suburb by offering diversity in place of homogeneity; concentration of servicesinstead of dispersal; variety, excitement, and difference in place ofmonotony, routine, and sameness. It makes no sense for the city to compete withthe suburb on the latter's own terms.

"What the city must do, if it is to make itself anattractive place to live, is to polish up its own unique attributes. It will not win the rural- minded that way; but it can win others, provided itdoes not price itself out of the market by making its advantages tooexpensive. Its advantages are convenience and quickaccessibility to a variety of opportunities. It could make them too expensive by remaining dangerous orby choking up its communication channels.

"It is for this reason--that is, to make the mostof its diversity- - that the city must come to grips withits traffic problem.When its traffic arteries are choked, the city not only becomes apain to enter but also its main attraction, quick accessibility to variousparts, beccmes unavailable. The proper solution to this problem doesnot lie in endless building of more and more expressways and more.and moreparking lots....A part of the solu- tion to the traffic problem is to make thecity relatively a less and less attractive place for automobiles by providing moredesirable alternatives. This can be done by increasing the cost ofdriving in the city relative to the cost of buses, subways andtaxis--and here again we mean by 'cost, comfort, speed, reliability, convenience, and so on, aswell as both public and private money.

"When it is easy and comfortable to get aroundin the city, the city then has one of its most effective offsetsto the suburb's lute of grass and barbecue pits....

"So far as we can see, the things cities have todo in order to make themselves more attractive places forindustry, for the most part, are the same things that make them more attractiveplaces to live in--that is, the development of their citizens'potentialities, their land, and their transportation. Investments in such development, then, would seemto be good investments, regardless of whether the competitivesituation is such that people or jobs will be more attractedthereby. It may be that certain

19 attractive- kinds of development thatwould be functional for residential of industrial or commercial ness would bedysfunctional for certain kinds attractiveness, but if thecity is to continue to exist as asystem com- posed of its citizens,the development of people, landand transportation is clearly necessary.

The "Who Pays?" Issue city as a system en- "It is at this pointthat the conception of the with its environmenthighlights certain irrationalities gaged in bargaining people who in the presentscheme of things. No one seems to question that restaurants, buses, taxis, and so come to use thecity's service's such as There seems, however, to be anotion on, areexpected to pay for them. of garbage, and the smooth that other services,such as roads, the absence flow of traffic neednot be paid for by manyof the people who clearly benefit from them.... persuade to bear "The question essentiallyis one of whom the city can the full cost, it the costs of itsmodernization. If it charges its users long as they have might defeat its own purposeby driving them away, so for subsidization of itsmoderniza- alternatives. If it turns to the state tion effort, it runs intothe problem of its limitedpolitical bargaining power as comparedto rural and suburbancounties.... that "Local finance, then, isin head-on collisionwith the conclusion active training center it is, necessary for thecity to accept its role as an hard fact, namely, ; for the underprivileged. This hard fact, plus another not in a good posi- that the underprivilegedwhom the city is attracting are tion to beef up the city's powerto bargain for the massivefinancial American cities generally assistance it needs, justabout convinces us that themselves cannot, by the leverageof their own assets,find anything for the purposes but a less and lesssatisfying future. In other words, for conclude that by and we think it must serveduring the next generation, we social system.... large the older Americancity is not a truly viable for this condition was "For some time thefavorite reformers' remedy governments within a drasticconsolidation or tightfederation of all local of the frustra- the so-called metropolitanarea. The heartbreaking record Moreover, one tion of such hopes istoo familiar toneed recitation here. metropolitan area does notstay difficulty with thisapproach is that the fixed. It continues to spread. City cannot be "If, then, most insistentproblems of the American system in its own right, solved through the city'sbargaining as a social social systems of they must be solved bycollaborative action involving state, and national--workingto a a morecomprehensive order--regional, structures--city, town, large extent with andthrough existing municipal and and county--and developing newinstitutions for regional consensus region-wide action on somematters. cities "How is this to bebrought about?First, to what extent can to bringing about yet contribute throughtheir limited bargaining power (we would rather say 'more the necessary collaborationof these 'higher'

-20 -

3 comprehensive' or to borrow from Luther Gulick, 'extended') systems?The answer to this question, quite candidly, will depend to a very consider- able extent on the quality of political and professional leadership in city governments in the next few years. Mayors possessed of imagination and persuasiveness, supported by information supplied by planners and other professionals, and backed up by citizen organizations andgroups deeply concerned about the future of the city, should be able to contribute mightily to the education needed to persuade the broader publics and their responsible representatives of the necessity for the kind of actionwe are suggesting. To the extent that such education is successful, however, it would probably result in decreasing reliance by the cityon bargaining and increasing reliance on 'rights' end 'common interests' in its dealings with its institutional environment.

"Any resulting improvements in the functioning of the city which made it more attractive to different kinds of people and enterprises, especially those that have 'influence' outside the city, would tend tosome extent to rehabilitate the city's bargaining power.Realistically, however, current trends indicate that the future of cities depends mainlyupon the prospect of better integration with their environments through other mechanisms than that of bargaining.For example, population growth, being almost entirely outside the central and other older cities, is likely in the longrun to worsen rather than to improve the cities' representative positions in state legislatures and the Congress as reapportionment progresses.We would also observe that the game of politics, as it is played in many states, makes it hard: for city leaders to win the support they need at state capitals, because their very position as spokesman for cities setsup antagonisms in the traditional, however outmoded, contexts of urban-ruralor urban- suburban conflict, thus impeding acceptance by the larger society of its interest in the integration of the older urban cores with the totalemerg- ing urban system. Political competition becomes an end in itself and pushes aside basic social goals."

Hopeful Indicators

But so much for pessimism. There are hopeful indications that urban states and an urban nation will increasingly accept their responsibilities with respect to the total urban society, including the old and stillessen- tial central cities:

1. We do seem to be discovering that we are anurban nation and that our major domestic problems are problems related to urban change and development.

2. The establishment, however belatedly, of urban studies centers of various kinds at an increasing number of universities for the purpose of engaging in research, education, and extension activities with respect to urban problems.

3. The gradual strengthening and sophistication of federal and state programs in the urban field.

- 21 - 4. The fact that pathologies hitherto thought of as characteristic only of old and wicked cities are beginning to spreadas gray areas, through once fashionable suburbs, and to leapfrog across the countryside, generating a new sense of identity of concern among people in many parts of urban regions. r, 3 5. The potentially integrating effect of electronic data processing, through the development of,an immensely broader andmore accessible base of common information for the formation of policy and the concertingof action on an urban-wide basis. U

6. The increasing number of experiments in new forms of intergovern- mental collaboration, both horizontal and vertical. The National Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations is a leader in this adventurein discovering new dimensions and potentialities in federali&as an instru- ment of government for a complex urban empire.

"We conclude that bargaining among or by cities and other political r/ units engaged in providing government withinour metropolitan areas will neither 'save' our central cities nor provide rational direction forthe

. development of our expanding or 'spreading' urban regions. In short, bar- gaining has all but broken down as ameans for achieving the adaptation and integration of the various social systems that comprisemetropolis. Hence, we must look to the larger, more comprehensive agencies ofurban government, namely: state and nation; groups of individuals, especially planners and various other professionals; non-governmental organizations and institutions--universities, voluntary associations insuch fields as health and welfare, civic organizations, economicor social interest groups, large private corporations like utility companies and othersengaged in area-wide service--to do several things.

"State and national governments can, through legal-bureaucraticpro- cedures and through the use of money, technical assistance, and direct service activities, do much to redress the balanceor equilibrium among the less comprehensive systems and in so doing create conditions underwhich bargaining by them may yet play a constructive though limited role.

"The non-governmental groups and organizations may, directlyor indir- ectly, make some contributions to these ends, but their greatest contribu- tions should be in the direction of developing the factual and ideological base for the sense of 'identification' or 'solidarity' with the largerurban community which must exist if there is to be agreement and action in terms of metropolitan needs and goals. And, here again, state and nationalgov- ernments have vital contributions to make as major participantsor senior partners in the whole business of metropolitan government. Gradually, these activities may be expected to lead to the development and acceptanceof new n mechanisms and institutions for arriving at metropolitan goals, hammering j out metropolitan policies, and executing important business ofconcern to the whole metropolis. r Li "What, as these developments occur, will be the evolving roles and functions of the older central cities?Not being endowed with the gift of prophecy, we cannot presume to say; but we will venture this opinion: that unless some such developments as these do occur, the future of thenow grievously handicapped members of the metropolitan constellation willbe dim indeed." a - 22 - 3 4. CASE STUDIES FROM METROPOLITAN CENTERS

The first one-third of the conference was characterized by concen- trated "input" and "digestion" of theory. Study of the foregoing paper on "American Cities as Social Systems," with considerable intereston the idea of the city's function in training, led to two days devoted to a searching look at metropolitan centers. Focus was provided by findings about decision-making processes in two particular cities presented by two outstanding urban researchers, one a sociologist, and one a political scientist.

Linton C. Freeman, Department of Sociology, Syracuse University, dis- cussed results of studies he conducted of how 39 urban-decisions were made--and by whom--in Syracuse, N.Y., during the late 1950's. Edward C. Banfield, Department of Government, Harvard University, used the case study method to trace and to elicit generalizations about the structure of politi- cal influence in Chicago during roughly the same period.

Freeman and Banfield thus joined the training staff and the practi- tioner-reactors as athird staff group--the urban researcher. Each became acquainted informally with the participants and their concerns. Staff and participants then planned with each speaker how best to use his resources. On successive days each speaker first gave a short description of the topic he planned to cover. There was then a break for Work Group sessions in which members decided what to listen for, for what issues to be alert. Then each social scientist presented his material. Longer group meetings were then Yield to develop questions to ask in a later interchange with the speaker. The presentations were taped and edited as follows. Questions and responses at the end of each presentation came either spontaneously from individuals or accrued from the Work Groups.

I---"Leadership in Syracuse"

By Linton C. Freeman

You have invited me here, I think, as a sort of technical expert with some ideas that practitioners in urban situations might find useful. My ostensible role here is to give you knowledge that you can use in social engineering. But I am not in a position to give you that knowledge. My reading of sociology and my reading of political science suggest thatour knowledge is so meager, so minimal, and so confused that it would be awfully hard to say anything that has actual, practical reality.

This meeting might well be organized around a reversal of roles. You who are actively engaged in the affairs of your local community might talk to me. You may have a lot more to say to me than I have to say to you. Nevertheless, I will try to describe whatwe did in one study in Syracuse, N.Y. You have two published pamphlets about this study. 1/

1/ Freeman, Linton C., et al. Local Community Leadership. (University College of. Syracuse UniversITT7-196077-60------"---- Freeman, Linton C., et al.Metropolitan Decisionmaking: Further Analyses from the Syracuse Study of Local Community Leadership. University College of Syracuse University, l92. - 23 -

-711/...... ;1111,111111/ -w

We who made the study set out to ask a few very simple-minded questions. The fact that we did limit ourselves to basic, simple questions was useful. Many sociologists start by asking broad, general questions in an attempt to get data for the development of significant knowledge. It is my own view that a more helpful approach is to ask some very simple questions. Once answers are provided for the simple problems, then one can build a more complex system. In our study you will find no answers to the total com- munity operation.You will see no elaborate systems emerging.However, we do have some answers to three questions:

1. What is a leader?

2. How concentrated is leadership and to what extent is it concentrated in the hands of the few?

3. How do people get into leadership positions; how do people get involved in the activity of leadership?

We did our study in one community, Syracuse, a metropolitan area with a population of 423,000, 9cnative-born white. It is a transportation and manufacturing center, governed by a city council and a strong mayor.The county is governed by a board of advisors. It has always been a one-party town, a Republican stronghold. In the late 1940's and early 1950's, there was one Democratic mayor, and there have been a few Democratic councilmen. It has a radio-TV station. It is a typical, middle-sized, old-fashioned eastern town.

We wanted to find out hOw decisions are made. We found our answers by wandering around, talking rather casually with bankers and commercial heads about what recent decisions had been made. We ended up with a list of 39 decisions. We do not pretend that this is a complete representative sample, just generally representative.

Beginning with the list of 39 decisions, we approached the people whom we first checked: lawyers, people legally responsible, titular heads of associations. For every decision, we turned to those who were formally and legally responsible. Without telling them what decisions we saw them as legally responsible for, we said: "Pick out those decisions in which you were actively involved, and those in which you were not involved." Then we asked them to name.other persons who, in their opinion, had been involved--persons they had seen at meetings on those issues or had talked with about the issues. In this way we got from them a list of other decision-makers or people involved. We tabulated the names, and we checked these lists with those with whom we first talked.

We repeated the process by talking with the people newly named on the lists and got to a third level. At this point the number of new names was falling off considerably. We had come to the point where we could cut off. We might have gone on, but we were getting very few different names at the third level.

We then attempted to answer for this one community the first question, What is a leader? Here one runs into a great deal of criticism and elaborate -24-

,.."wompow discussion of inadequacies of the definition of "leader." We would have to live with and watch every move leaders make, day and night, to deter- mine who affects a decision. This can't be done, so various shortcut techniques have been used in lieu of observing everybody all the time. The techniaue we used grouped together four basic questions:

1. .We asked: Who was there?. Who talked to whom? (This defined our broad view of'articipation."

2. We identified top heads of top organizations inthe com- munity. We collected information on formal structures of formal organizations and used some earlier data which showed the titular heads of organizations. We ended up with a list of formal authorityor positional leadership: heads of banks, heads of commercial organizations,and so forth.

3. We found other studies using social activityas a criter- ion and naming those who were active in voluntaryasso- ciations in the community.We selected from our data those most active in the most groups.

Then we followed the classical method of asking peoplewhom they saw as leaders, the reputational approach.

Thus we built four lists of people who, by thesesimple criteria, might be called decision-makers: "Those who were the active participants, those who were formal authorities in majorindustries and other organizations, those who were most active in voluntary associations,and those who had reputations as leaders.

We found in the first place that theReputational List and the Posi- tional List corresponded quite closely.Reputation for leadership seemed to go with occupying the position ofthe titular head in major industry and other organizations. We found, however, that neither ofthese indexes cor- responded to the Participation List, the peoplewho had been involved from day to day with the 39 decisions. These were different people from those who were reputed to be leadersor who were titular heads of industriesor organizations.

In looking at this, we thought perhaps the organizationplayed the important role. Remember, in the Reputational analysis,one goes to informers and says, Who are leaders?"Maybe the organization was the leader. So we built an index of Organizational Participationby classi- fying all participants by organization.We then tabulated the amount of active participation by each organizationrather than by individual.We found that organizational participation didcorrespond quite highly with Positional and Reputational.We found, furthermore, that the active individual participants were most often eithergovernment people or tech- nical, professional people whose job itwas to represent a- firm or an organization in some way. From all this we began to suspect that in Syracuse there were at least three distinct kinds ofleaders..

- 25 First there Fe Institutional Leaders,people who are the titular heads of the major organizations. According to our study theywere not terribly active in day-to-day decision-makingactivities. The head of the largest bank, for example, did nothimself get involved. Instead, he sent his vice presidentor his cashier.What the institutional leader seemed to do is:

A. Provide access to the decisions forunderlings, so that when the vice presidentgoes in, he does not go in as John Smith, but as the "Bank Y"man. Access is provided through thename of the institutional leader.

B. Provide a model for participation,so When the em- ployee goes to the meeting he does not have tocheck with his boss--he knows; he wouldnot be a vice presi- dent of the bank if he did not. He knows that he represents the interests of theorganization at the meeting. The titular leader, the institutional authority, seems to get involved onlywhen the under- ling runs into problems that he alonecannot handle.

So we found that the bignames, reputedly the leaders, were not them- selves active. They provided access, theywere the figureheads, but they were not actively at work in the decision making.

Next, there is a group of people underthese who do go in, the people who are involvedon a day-to-day basis in making decisions. These include elected government people andsome executives who are not at the top of the major businesses. Often they are especially pickedas community repre- sentatives from a public relationsdivision, or they may be especially trained to participate insome way.

We found that people active involuntary associations occasionally get in on a decision by beinginvolved in day-to-day activities. These leaders do not have power derived fromworking for top industriesor other organizations--they get in because theyare interested and they work hard. They can get in on the decision ifthey have some special interest. They are the motivated. They join everything and takeexecutive positions in voluntary associations. In general, they get involved somewhatin deci- sion making, by coming again and again,and talking until finally they get in.

These, then, are the three typesof leaders:

1. "Institutional leaders," who providethe models, but who are not involved daily.

2. The "effectors," who work for theinstitutional leaders and are involved daily.

3. The "activists," people withoutstrong economic backing who get involved by sheer hardwork.

These descriptionsmay or may not fit other communities, butwe have taken a first step in describing leadership.

-26- Our second question was: "To what extent is leadership participation in decision making concentrated in the hands of afew?" To answer this Question, we did a factor analysis of our 39 decisions to uncoverthe degree to which the same groups of individuals cametogether to affect.decisions. The analysis revealed that there were nine groups ofindividuals coming together again and again. However, ten decisions were seemingly independent of these nine groups of decision-makers.

We were interested in whether participation patterns wereoriented around general content or areas of interest. We might have a set of issues concerning, for example, public health or economics, andfind the same people coming together to deal with the issues. The fact is that we found clusters of this type almost exclusively. We found clusters built around issues of generally common content that drew people fromall areas--from management, from the Republican Party, from the DemocraticParty, from all areas.

We began to see that there was considerable spread ofparticipation and interest, considerable dispersion of leadership. We did find that major industries and banks tended to be involved inall decisions. We were concerned, moreover, bythe "organizational" factor we discovered earlier, and so we took a look at the data byorganization rather than by individual. We asked what organizations came together again and again, perhaps with different individuals. If the same organization groups came together, there might not be the actual dispersal thatthere seemed. Al- though John Smith and Bill Jones came together over a rangeof problems,. John Smith comes from General Electric and Bill Jones comesfrom Carrier Corporation. So we get General Electric and Carrier Corporationcoming together again and again.

At the individual level, it seemed decision making was auitedispersed; at the organiFEEIBEIFVel it seemed relatively moreconcentrated. So we looked at clusters of organizations. We studied the organizations that came together, rather thanthe issues. We found that there was a set of organizations, eight clusters of organizations comingtogether to solve problems.We found each cluster characterized by having alarge manufac- turing or a commercial firm--one of the two, notboth; a large financial firm (one of the majorbanks), and a large law firm. The cluster thus represented a range of talents: a major commercial industry, amajor finan- cial interest, and a major legal interest. So the cluster's appearance, according to this analysis, tended to be built out ofindustrial or commer- cial segments presumably concerned with their owninterest. GE, with banks and law firms, was one interest group gettingtogether again and again. We found another cluster consisting of Carrier Corporation,another bank, and another law firm meeting again and again over a range ofissues. We found very little cooperationbetween the two clusters.

This takes us back to the question ofwhether leadership is really concentrated or dispersed. It is not really concentrated because onebank and law firm and manufacturer come togetherat one time; and another bank, law firm, and manufacturer come together atanother time, each group re- maining separate and distinct and nevermerging. This was our perception. Although there may be scme communication betweenthese sets of interest groups, there is no coordination. -27- 'VD

ti

There is, however, some coordinationwithin Syracuse. There are two organizations that do the coordinating. These are "umbrella" organizations which bring one organization togetherwith another. They are the Republi- can Party and an area development organization. They try to prevent dis- persion and conflict. One gets the feeling that althoughthere is some dispersion, there is the possibilityof greater dispersion.

The third auestion is: "How to get in?" I am not going to say much about this. There are two basic approachesto the question. There was the psychologist who said, "Someguys got it and some guys ain't:We have to find what these peoplecarry in their heads."We considered this but thought perhaps there are otherfactors to be considered besidespersonal characteristics. So we studied social characteristics.We began to talk with those people Who had the mostvalued characteristics--like beingold- time residents, having lots ofmoney, and so on. Then we studied and talked with the people who did not havethese characteristics. We had a shock or two. We diAcovered that, contrary tothe usual feeling, being old.-time residents did not seem to help. Many of the activeones turned out to be people who came from othercommunities. These are the effector-level people, often involved with majorindustries. They are not locally-based, since their companies transfer themaround. They do have access and do play a strong role.

I would like to make a remarkor two based on my own casual observa- tions of the history of decisionmaking. When we started our study, the general myth amongmany people was that Syracuse was aone-man town. Certainly at the time we studied itwas not, in fact, a one man town. A relatively small cluster ofmen did, at one time, dominate almostevery- thing that happened in Syracuse (andprobably in almost every other city that large). However, large competitive industrial andcommercial firms were developed or moved in from elsewhere and demandeda role.The old local interests might be able todominate little local firms; theywere not able to dominate General Electric.'These company people automatically have importance when theycome in. They must have a voice.

What seems to have happened is thatSyracuse began with a small, domi- nant power structure;a few people occupied the key positions andmade the major decisions. These were replaced, or tended tobe dispersed, in the way I mentioned earlier--into severalgroups or clusters dominated by major industrial and commercial empires. An attempt was made by the Republican Party to build an "umbrella" (whichworked beautifully). Then Republican dominance began to erode. Erosion was supported and reinforcedby creation of the Metropolitan Area DevelopmentOrganization, the purpose of whichwas to provide a sort of coordinationthat would insure dominance ofa central block.

In Syracuse, Republicans have, for a long time,successfully cut out any competition from the Democratic Party. Complete Republican dominance began to erode in the 1950's and 1960's,but traditionally the Democratic Party has been cut out. The labor movement has been cut out: there is truly no effective labor movement in Syracuse.Attempts have been made, but when threatened, people in power positionshave come together and labor has been beaten.

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44.0111.1VIMPIP. , The current threat to the present organization in Syracuse is the anti- poverty program. The response to the anti-poverty program in Syracuse is not predictable. We have a small program going, a little flurry of activity. The head of the local government has seen the program as a threat since it started. Again, here is an outsiae threat to.the unity provided by the Republican Party. One suspects that if the Party screams enough, this out- side threat will be no more effective than the threat of labor.To the extent that there is built some sort of unity among labor, the Democratic Party, and the anti-poverty program, there is a possibility that a con- certed effort will develop a new cluster that can demand a role.

I would suggest that today in Syracuse there are still the same clusters, with some juggling, but with over-all coordination provided by the Republican Party.

Questions from the Conference and Professor Freeman's Answers

Q. In these decisions that you have listed, is there any difference, in your mind, in their impact on major policies in Syracuse?

A. I am sure there is a difference.We thought about and worked on this and finally decided we couldn't develop a viable method for deciding the impact of the decision. Quite obviously some of these are much more significant than others to a broader segment of the citizens in their daily lives. How can you really tell?

Q. You indicated that the institutional leader did not have to tell the effector how to act, but did you find that the institutional leader designated which effector was to participate?

A. In most cases it seemed to me the effector's job description covered which kind of participation, such as vice presidents in some cases, whose jobs were to cover various ranges of problems.

Q. I do not understand why labor had no part in the decision-making process. Because they were just not strong?

A. Yes.

Q. I wonder, for instance, in a community where industrial unions are powerful, would the Democratic Party perhaps be more viable? I wonder, if this were the case, whether there would be a more heterogeneous group of people at the institutional level?

A. I would guess in a community with another party--the Democratic or another effective party or a real labor movement--that therewould be people from the party or labor union in at the effector and institutional- leader level.

Q. In terms of your analysis of the different types of leaders, do you have any hunches as to the degree to which these threebasic types apply to other communities?Are these kinds of leadership observable only in Syracuse?

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- A. My hunch is this isa fairly typical community. In a town with a two-party system or a labormovement, these three typestend to be even more evident.

Q. I want to raise a questionon the democratic structure. Can you give us an indication of whether 5% or 10% participatingdirectly in one or more of these 39 decisions would be closer to your conceptof what the situation should be?

A. I can't imagine in modernurban communitiesvery much growth of direct participation; but thereare vast segments of the communitywhich are wholly unrepresented. In a modern community therole of technical expert is growing. The older role of economicdominance need not be main- tained. I think essentially thereshould be a broader baseof representa- tion rather than more direct participants inany significant way. This is seen in the poverty program whereaverage neighborhood groups do have representatives. I think this is avery healthy situation--where people want to get in.

Q. In our Work Groupwe had a discussion on how togo about changing our school situation if we used theinformation given inyour analysis. One person thought we should get a banker, a lawyer,and a merchanton a committee, while another disagreed. How would you do it?

A. One of the decisions coveredin the Syracuse studywas the establishment of the YouthDevelopment Center.Several interests in Syra- cube wanted to setup, with Syracuse University,an agency which would study youth problems andthen hopefully establishsome programs to reduce youth problems. They went to The Ford Foundation,which expressedcon- siderable interest if, andonly if, there were community-widesupport. The Foundation did not wantany more "ivory tower boys" spinningout more studies about youth.

So the University setabout developing a committee toestablish a community base. They got the list ofnames of 17 of the most influential men--institutional leaders--in Syracuse.They set up a committee with these men and told themabout youth problems. The committee said, "Yes, we are for this

The University went back to TheFord Foundation saying, "Weare ready. We have our academic team, and we have community backing."So The Founda- tion representatives said,"We'll send some people aroundto check," which they did. The Ford people came aroundand talked to everyagency that had anything to do with youth. The agency people told them,"We,acknowledge Syracuse University, but thisplan is a lousy plan. We don't like it and we certainly won't support it. The committee is not representative."

Then Syracuse Universitypulled in its horns and wentaround again, this time working withmiddle-level, effector types ofleaders in all the youth agencies andorganizations in Syracuse, publicand private. They called these People intoa meeting, introduced the personnel,out- lined the plan. Everyone said, "This is interesting."Then the University called Ford back. When The Foundation checkedaround the community this

- 30 time, everyone said, "Great plan,, we are with you."So the Youth Develop- ment Center was established simply because people at the effector level, not at the institutional level, were involved.

This is the significant point. The top 17 people were interested but not sufficiently so to communicate this to their underlings. As was stressed earlier, it is only when the institution is deeply concerned that this communication takes place.

Q. Does holding power and influence in decisions automatically make you a "bad guy" whom we "good guys"--who want to change things--are against?

A. I am greatly to blame for this "good guy-bad guy" imagery, and that was not my intention. It would seem to me that anyone who is con- cerned with the community is partially motivated by self-interest. If his self-interest is similar to mine, he is called a "good guy" by me.And if it isn't, then he's a "bad guy" to me.

I did not mean to imply anything "bad - guyish" about the people in- volved in the decisions in Syracuse. By my own standards these are very good guys who have done tremendous work for the community; in fact, they have made it possible for the community to continue to exist. My main objection, which raised the "good guy-bad guy" imagery (which I suspect is also possible in similar towns) is when one fairly well organized group begins to predominate. Then the range of interests represented in com- munity decision making is narrowed down so much that one can see the situation requires some major organizational change.

One of the ways of changing the organization of decision making in a community is to increase both the number and the organization of activists. Once this begins to happen, the activists themselves beginto build a base of some considerable influence. They begin to generate institutional leaders and effectors so the basic structure of decision making itself is changed.

Q. Are you suggesting, then, that in terms of entering this arena of decision making, the highest potential place to enter is through the activist group?

A. Yes. In Syracuse there is a neighborhood council which has organized enough, spoken enough, worked out a position on enough things that they are beginning to be a force with which the city must actually reckon. The mayor is now beginning to ask before he makes a move, "How will the neighborhood council respond?"So they are becoming an institutional force. To the extent that such groups organize, they can, in fact, modify deci- sions.

Q. Are there mechanisms so that there can be more understanding between the leaders in the community and the new influence groups that are forming, so there is not this "good guy-bad guy" polarity?

A. This is possible with scme groups, as in the example just given. This neighborhood council is made up mostly of local middle-class people

31 3 who begin with the assumptionthat not everyone in power isa "bad guy." The authorities respond, "Maybewe have something in common with this group," and they work from there.

The problem is not with that neighborhoodgroup, however, but with, the community action groups in Syracuse. In order to motivate thesegroups Li to activity at all it has beennecessary, in the minds of the organizersat least--and probably with some realism--tocreate a polarity, to convince people that those in powerare bad, totally bad. At the same time the attempts by the organizers to polarizeare causing those in power to think that the organizationsare bad, thus increasing the polarization.

One thing that might be done inthis case is to educate those making the decisions about the actualstructure of the action organization,to understand that a certain amount ofpolarization is necessary and shouldbe encouraged, that in the longrun it will die out as these groups gain success. If the city authoritieswere educated to that degree alone, they would remain more cordial. The polarization would be minimizedand lead to a more effective workingrelationship. U Q. As you increase democratization, domore people come to the con- ference table bringing informationabout more groups or do theycome bring- I ing power on whethera UFFI77.317Fes or fails to go?

A. Democratization of the base, inmy view, is allowing interests to be represented that are notnow represented in the decision making process. The possibility of inefficientdecision making or, asyou sug- gest, of paralyzing decision making byindefinitely increasing this base, is a danger.

The role of the technical expert isclear because most organizations require complex information. Without technical help theycan't make the most efficient decision.We need to get a balance betweenthe represen- tation of interests and the drawingon technical expertness. Then a deci- sion can be made representing theinterests that demanda voice in the decision-making process. One would want to broaden therepresentative base and at the same time drawupon the skills of technical experts who do not simply speak for theinterests of limited communitysegments.

In Syracuse they douse consultants in making decisions. Very often the consultants come fromvery few firms. The experts are either the employees of industries or members ofa few consulting firms thatreappear again and again in association withthese same industrial empires. The outside consultant has not playeda terribly large role. And again we have the essentially unrepresentedwhich we would hopecan build a role out of these new programs, at leastas interests represented in deci- sions.

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rm , -32- for their Q. Is there anything we cando to help train effectors role in decision making, tohelp them improve their levelof performance, to be aware of theactual basis upon which they aremaking decisions? large part by A. In Syracuse thisleadership study was motivated in, that sort of concernand was supported by theFund for Adult Education. research staff was called in Immediately uponcompletion,ofthis study, the effector-level people in to consult on the plansfor a seminar series for recruit order to try to teach someskills. They used our research to empha- people at a level thoughtsignificant. They used our results to well as in size the role of theeffector in the communication process, as conducted to the daily decision makingprocess. Such seminars have been of the this day. In fact, a week fromtomorrow I am due.to appear at one meetings to talk to a groupof 15 or 20 leaders about thesort of role they play as effectorsand about the agencies withinthe community that This they are going to haveto consider in order toinfluence decisions. The role of the is the role theUniversity is playing on a smallscale. University might beincreased, I think. This may be an important poten- tial role for an educationalinstitution.

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An Attempt at Application of the Theory a After discussion with Linton Freeman oC the Syracuse leadership study, the training staff asked conference participants to attempt to apply con- cepts thus far considered. Each community group (the "teams" from various urban centers) was given skeletal guidelines or questions by which to ana- lyze a reeent community decision: 3 1. Who were the decision-makers? (Institutional leaders, effectors, activists, any others?)

2. Which organizations clustered around the decision? (Which were U most immediately involved?Which were secondarily involved? Which were only peripherally concerned?)

3. What kinds of mechanisms were used? (e.g., coercion, bargaining, legal-bureaucratic, collaboration based on solidarity, other?)

Reports from the community team meetings tended to be tangential to the questions, but to suggest some internalization of the theory presented. One group reported that it had worked on building itself into a team (or nucleus) in order to explore the ways by which racial issues are handled back home--and means by which the team might become a stronger influence in decisions on these issues. Another group analyzed recent local actions r-t . taken in urban renewal and discovered that one team member--an "effector"-- had access to the mayor and might be able to influence him. A third looked L. critically at its community's War on Poverty Commission in terms of organ- izational representation and biracial composition. (It should be noted that a fourth community team comprised of persons who did not work together at Li home had difficulty locating an urban decision in which all meml-ers had either participated or even shared information.)

At this point the pattern of the conference became more visible: presentation of research findings and theory about urban decision making illuminate and systematize experience of the participants. There was some frustration at this point over the lack of an ultimate "model" of urban decision making. There was also the feeling that the small work groups were important in establishing effective communication and that a major emphasis should be upon application of relevant theory. The Banfield presentation represented a second attempt to use a n specific urban study as a basis for work by the community teams. U

U II -- "Political Influence and Control in Chicago" by Edward C. Banfield

The report that I give you will be some of the results of a study of political influence. The city I am reporting on is Chicago, but the premise of the whole venture is that other cities are similar in many important respects, especially as you move to a higher analytical level.

The findings on Chicago are based on rather, elaborate case studies. They are not simply sucked out of my imagination. I am giving you the find- ings which have been published, if you want them, in the first six chapters of the book, Political Influence.

To me, the most striking fact about the Chicago political system is its extreme formal decentralization. From a purely legal standpoint, Chicago can hardly be said to have acity government at all. It has scores, or hundreds, of more or less independent, autonomous units. And all these units have, to some extent, independent veto power. You think that the Mayor holds an independent element of public government, per se, butthe executive branch itself is divided into dozens of bits andpieces which are rather loosely related. The City Clerk, for example, is elected and is entirely independent of the Mayor. We look at the County Government as contrasted with the City and, of course, that is againentirely independent.

The government of Chicago or of any city can beregarded from a formal standpoint as a great governing committee which makes allof its decisions unanimously or doesn't make any decisions at all.

From a formal standpoint I have decided it'slike a big Quaker meeting- - every active member being in apurely autonomous relation to the whole, and not under any kind of discipline. In such a situation, nothing can be done except somehow to overcome formal decentralizationby informal centralization.

The Democratic Party in Chicago is the principalcontinuing mechanism, the principal structural element formaintaining this informal centraliza- tion which sets aside or counteracts thedecentralization. And, of course, in Cook County, it's the same story. There are a party organization and informal arrangements to get around the formaldecentralized arrangement. Similarly, in the state government, thereis party organization. Usually in Illinois that is the Republican Party.

Now these party structures which set asidethe formal decentralization are of course only one class(although currently by far the most important) of such structure. There are many others. The civic associations, for example, have an existence that goes on fromissue to issue, and they can be regarded as structures of control. Let us say the taxpayers, federation is a structure of control. It exercises a more or less predictable way of centralizing influence over voters who may vote onpublic expenditures

These more or less permanent structures ofcontrol do not entirely over- come the formal decentralization. There are always remaining obstacles to -35- centralization: obstacles which a political head, or any person who wants to initiate some kind of political action in the city, must getaround in one way or another. These remaining obstacles in Chicago and almostany-

where else, I think, will be found to be three general types. .

First are the elected officials who act autonomously or in opposition to the party or machine, if you want to call it that. Some elected officials may simply be untouched by machine influence; this is what I mean by autono- mous. Others may be of the other party and be contestants trying to frus- trate the design of the political head seeking to bring about centralization.

The second general obstacle to this informal centralization is the courts. Ultimately, the only truly autonomous court--the only court that is utterly free of city and state political influence, at any rate-- is the United States Supreme Court. Most of the courts elsewhere are to some de- gree subject to party influence, but in Illinois it is of a highly irregular and unpredictable sort, as far as I can make out.

And finally, the third major group that could be considered an obstacle are the voters. The voters can be appealed to in Chicago and elsewhere, not only to vote candidates in or out of office, but to accept or not accept bond issues, charter amendments, and the like.

All of these possibilities of checking action of a political head who wishes to bring about an informal centralization of authority give encour- agement to some to try to check it.They create opportunities to bargain, to demand a price, a price for consent, a price for not seeking to obstruct or to frustrate or to veto. The compromise, the payoff, may be in terms of the substance of proposals that are made. The policy-maker compromises in order to appease some dissident element which has in it's possession authority indispensable to the creation of the centralization of authority.

It is through compromises of this sort that issues are resolved in Chicago. The political head must make a sacrifice in order to buy the further centralization of authority that is needed. Bringing about this informal centralization always involves an expenditure of some kind of political wherewithal. It represents a cost to the political head. If he uses the influence in one situation, he won't have it to use in some other situation. The political head then can be viewed as an investor. He doesn't want to use up all his political capital. If he did he might achieve certain political goals, but then he wouldn't have any capital left for the next occasion. He would go out of business, so to speak, for lack of capital. He would have no influence left.

His problem then is to use influence to achieve his immediate goal while at the same time keeping himself in business and even increasing his working capital.

Let me pause at this stage to summarize in abstract terms the model that I am trying to present. I see every situation that we are analyzing in terms of an initial distribution of formal authority.This initial -36- distribution must be overcome if anything is to be done. Now, if you want to be a legal purist about this, you would say this initial distribution of authority can be partly overcome in only one way, and that is in the way of the Quaker meeting. Every individual must act autonomously, must use his authority according to his own light. Either he must contribute his piece of authority to the stockpile that the politicalhead is trying to bring together, or else he must withhold it on the basis ofhis own purely autonomous view of what the public interest presumablyrequires -.. taking the position that an official has the right andduty to make the decision according to criteria that are either expressed orimplied in the formal instrument that gives him the authority.

Needless to say, public matters are not decided in the mannerof a Quaker meeting. I don't know whether Quaker matters are decided inthe manner of a Quaker meeting, butother matters by and large are not. It is easy to see that as the number ofactors having authority increases, the difficulties in relying purely onautonomous contributions of author- ity in this centralizing process alsoincrease. Similarly, as the differ- ence of interests orperceptionsof the situation among the actors in- creases, controversies multiply andthe probability that they will all bring their little bits of authority to thecentral pile decreases.There- fore, as the heterogeneity of the distributionof authority increases, the amount of controversy increases. It becomes more and more necessary to overcome the initial decentralizationinformally, if anything is to be done.

Maybe the answer is that nothing is to bedone. I don't, myself, take it for granted that somethingalways should be done. It is quite possible that the best solution may often be todo nothing in certain matters.But that doesn't seem to be a view that iswidely accepted. If you assume, how- ever, that somethingmust be done and there should be ahigh volume of achievement from a political institution;if you assume a high volume of output is desirable and formalauthority is widely distributed; ifthose having the authority tend to disagree,either on public interest terms or as to how authorityshould be used--then it seems to methat you are bound to say informal mechanisms areindispensable. You can't have it any other we'll way. You can say, "We'll get alongwithout informal mechanisms, but also get along without getting muchdone." Or you could say, "We will centralize formal authority and thenwe'll get a lot done without the necessity of informal mechanisms."

Let me point out that thesevocations which reauire forms ofinformal centralization are in some sensecorrupt. Some may be bribery in theplain, He is in- simple sense of the term--anofficial being bought and paidfor. duced to give over hisauthority, but he is supposed toget in return either a payment of money or apromise of office or of personalsupport or whatever it might be.

From a purist standpoint andfrom a legal standpoint, anymotivation If it other than that described as thebasis of the authority iscorrupt. to is my duty to decide a publicquestion, and I turn my authority over of the word. you on the basis offriendship--that is corrupt in this sense -37- w

Any kind of informal centralization, it seems tome, is improper. Yet it is indispensable if you have a wide initial distribution of formal authority, with disagreement among those possessing the authority as to how it is to be used, and if you assume output is necessary or desirable.

This analysis brings us to the kinds and amounts of influence that an actor in a central position tries to centralize in order to get something done. Political heads focus on the kinds and amounts of influence that such an actor has to offer.What kind of prize can he give? Persuasion, selling, compromise on issues, favorsl.and so on.The politician's job is to focus on the kinds of prizes that he has to offer and on the means that he has to maintain his supply for the future. He is up against the problem of maintaining his capital. He has to use his output of bribes or influence, or whatever you want to call them, in such a way that he not only achieves the centralization he is looking for, but also maintains his general stock of incentives so that he can do the same thing on future occasions.

Let us look now at the subject from a slightly different perspective. Consider the situation of the political head: for example, the Mayor of Chicago Has he tiled to overcome the decentralization of formal authority to the voters when he considers how to get elected? The lower- and working- class wards of the inner city, the near downtown districts of Chicago, are the heart of the Democratic machine. The political head--or boss, if you want to call him that--gets control of these voters, in one way or another, with petty favors and patronage to precinct captains who, in turn, give phony friendship to the voter and get something from the voter which the voter doesn't think is worth very much; namely, his vote. This is very much as I might go up to a stranger and ask him for a match. This is not considered a property transfer since nobody places any great value on a match. If you are friendly, you can get the match--in this case the vote- - if the person in question doesn't place any value on it.

The outlying wards of Chicago are, most of them, middle class and not susceptible to the same inducement from the precinct captains. In fact, most people there are too busy watching television to receive the precinct captain when he comes around in the evening. The voters in these wards, especially the lower middle-class home owners, are tax-minded. They are also neighborhood-improvement minded, as distinguished from citywide- improvement minded. But they are also good government-minded--good govern- ment in the sense of honesty., efficiency, and economy.

As you go out farther from the center of the city to the higher income districts, especially the suburbs, you find people who are in favor of good government in a somewhat different sense. They are in favor of a high level of goods and services, not only for themselves, but for the city as a whole. The examination of voting statistics will show that the higher income subur- hanites are as keen for improvements to save the Cook County Hospital as are most of the low - income, lower-class people in the machine wards in the cen- tral city, who would be the principal beneficiaries of the hospital.

-38- This little account I have given of the voting population of Chicago is, I think, not essentially different from that of most large cities. The oldest parts of a city, those that were settled first, are almost every- where inhabited by the poor. The cities have grown out from the inside in successive waves. People who have "made it" have been able to buy houses, move to more pleasant and more prestigious residential districts. This has left in almost every city a 'lower-class inner district which is highly amenable to the kinds of rewards that a machine and a precinct captain of the old type have to offer. It means also that the outer districts, largr.y middle class, are extremely suspicious of the machine and consider them- selves above favors, petty bribes (perhaps not of more than petty bribes, but it is petty bribes that we are talking about), ethnic recognition and the like.

If the Mayor of Chicago had only Chicago in mind, the rational strategy for him would be to try to build the machine in the inner city where a good propOrtion of the population lives. He would build his machine there, sup- plemented with appeals to the tax-saving lower-middle class in some of the outlying wards. He could count on election time after time without the trouble of campaigning. He would have it made. He would have it bought. And this is what machine leaders in the inner city, by and large, want to do and, to a large extent, do.

Yet it is not what the Mayor of Chicago does. It is not what the mayor of any large city, who is a rational actor in this game, will do. The Mayor of Chicago wants to win in the county and the state, as well as in the city. And to win in the county and the state he has to have those middle-class, anti- machine, good government votes. He also wants national prestige for his party and himself and he has to appeal to the middle class for that, too. So he has to appeal to the middle class as well as to the lower class machine wards; and, unfortunately for him, what will help him most in the wards- - corruption of various kinds, patronage, favor giving--will hurt him most with the middle class and the outlying wards in the suburbs. He's unhappily in the position of the man who tries to keep his house warm by tearing out the woodwork and putting it into the furnace. He has to destroy, bit by bit, the machine to keep him going in the inner-city wards in order to placate and please the middle c7 os in the outlying wards.

The newspapers (I exclude the tabloids because they don't really enter this picture) with middle-class readership have an enormous bargaining power in the city. They are the scorecards of the middle class in deciding how to vote. The newspapers have a decided influence with this sector of the middle class to which the politician must be sensitive.They are leaders of middle- class opinion. They give, or withhold, the "Good Housekeeping seal of approval." They congratulate the Mayor for having appointed a new planning director recommended by the American Society of Planning Officials, or they condemn him for it. They congratulate him for instituting a performance budget, though Lord knows why they should be so keen on performance budgets. And the Mayor, who is so sensitive to charges that he is a machine politi- cian bribing voters in the central city, isable to point to this.

-39- In the last election that I observed in Chicago, the fliers that Mayor Daley distributed in the middle-class wards never mentioned the fact that he was a Democrat. But they stressed the business about performance bud- gets and all the other gimmicks that middle-class people are so fond of.

By the same token, the strategy of an opponent of the political head is dictated by these same considerations. And that strategy is to label him a boss. "Dictator Dick," they called Mayor Daley; "they" being the people who wanted to get him out and get themselves in. They described the Democratic machine as an octopus. What they meant was that it was Daley's octopus, and not theirs. But that again is an indispensable appeal to middle-class voters.

Let me pause to summarize at a higher level of generalities. My focus has been on this class character of the various sectors of the metropolis, because this determines the kinds of incentives--or bribes--that will work. This in turn determines and limits the strategy of the political head who tries to centralize authority over the voters.He tries to get them to give to him the little bit of authority the founding fathers and the charter- makers bestowed upon them. But when he cannot buy votes by the methods of the machine, he must get them by other methods.

And what are the other methods that are open for him to use?Person- ality politics is one method: charm, charisma, eating blintzes, smiling broadly--these are irrational appeals. I do not see the moral difference between getting somebody's vote by eating a blintz in his presence or by giving him a couple of dollars. It is just a Question, in my opinion: Which is cheaper and more convenient or more satisfactory all the way around?Either method controverts the legal, formal distribution of author- ity which implicitly asserts that the voter should use his authority as he thinks the public interest requires.

Personality politics is one alternative to machine politics Ideolo- gical and issue politics is another. By ideological politics I mean lumping all questions together and trying to encompass them in some necessarily simple account of all political things; a package which ties together all issues with a single, probably simple-minded, political truth. You know where you stand by.that touchstone. Well, this obviously has its dangers, too. It may not be reprehensible in quite the same sense that bribing voters' is, but it seems to me that in a society as complicated as ours there are some rather obvious dangers incurred by ideological voting. r,

Contrast in your mind the styles of two eminent Negro Congressmen. I do not know how it is now, but until one became old and ill, he used to spend r his week' ends in a slum office where he was accessible to anyone who wandered in off the street. He would do what he could to help, not because he loved people but because he wanted their votes. This is the style in which he accomplished it, and I am not interrogating the amount of useful things he may have done for people. As far as supporting the general goal of the L4 Negro race is concerned, he certainly could not be called a "race" man by any stretch of the imagination. He had voted against measures in Congress

4o which progressive Negroes consider indispensable. He could do so because he had already bought these votes by favors. The second Congressman, on the other hand, was beyond any doubt a demagogue, very charming, eloquent and--I suppose to those represented by him--fascinating and engaging. Whether his service was any greater than the first is not for me to decide. But here in extreme forms are personality politics of an ideologicalcast, on the one hand, and machine politics on theother.

In between, as the prescribed model, of course, is the independent voter who makes up his mind without ulterior motives. He can be found, I suppose, only in a Quaker meeting.

Questions from the Conference and Professor Banfield's Answers

Q. What impact can the indigenous person have on the decision- making process?

A. Well, indigenous people have been having an impact for a long while. I think the answer probably ought to take the form ofthe kinds of access to political influence that theworking class and lower class have had, compared to the kind they have at present. I suppose you mean indigenous people who are not supposed to be part of the powerstructure, part of the elite--ordinary people, people without much money oreduca- tion. Will putting them on a board and giving the board somekind of advisory--or more than advisory--function in city government,bestow power on these heretoforepowerless people?That perhaps is the impli- cation. I think in defining characteristics of thelower class we are going to get into a great deal of terminologicaldifficulty, because the sociologists who have studied the class have notdecided very satis- factorily what thesse characteristics are. I use the social science term "class" to refer to a "subconscious" characteristic,to refer to a group which has a characteristic view of things, a style, anoutlook which sets it apart from other subcultures. In my vocabulary, for practical pur- poses, there are three classes: the middle class, the working class, the lower class. I regard these as subcultures.

One of the defining characteristicsof the lower class is that it does not participate in communityaffairs, in churches, labor unions; it does not participate in anything. But I believe that the lower class does not participate because it does not care. It does not feel that it is part of the community. It does not feel that it has anyresponsibility for others, even for members of itsimmediate family. It spends time enjoying the pleasures of the senses,to the greatest degree possible, without caring a continental about the restof the world, state, city or neighborhood.

If you mean members of the lowerclass as I defined it, you cannot put them on boards. They do not want to be on boards. They do not have anything to say; they would rather goout and scratch themselves inthe sun than be on boards.

As for the working class, Ithink.'it does have a sense ofresponsi- bility toward a community of somekind. But we find the community viewed in less comprehensive terms.The community is likely to be the trade union, the neighborhood, the ethnicor church grouping, perhaps-- I as the primary focus of allegiance. The working-class person is notun- willing to make sacrifices for the sake ofhis community; but on the other hand, he is not knocking himself out to do goodto reform it, or make it better) either. He can take it or leave it.

The middle class, in our culture--except perhapsin the South-- especially Protestants and Jews, has givena very heavy impetus toward doing good, self-improvement and self-expression. The middle class has provided concern for the whole community.

How about indigenous people, so called, whocome from the working class? I would say that it is feasible to bring theupper working class into participant relations with civic undertakings ofvarious kinds. A good many such people woulduse this as a vehicle of upward mobility. Lei They would be there because they hada sense that this was a way to im- prove themselves, which is ostensibly middle-class thinking and motiva- tion. I do not think that they would, in anysense, represent the lower L.4 class. Lower-class people are as unreachable to the workingclass as they are to the middle class.

I do not think that it is true to say that the working class hasbeen unrepresented in the political life of this country in the past. As a matter of fact, until fairly recently, many citieswere run by the work- ing class. At the time of the immigration, say between 1840 and the end of the second World War, the cities were run by working-class politicians. The great thing that has happened, the fundamental change that has occurred in this country in the last 20 or 30 years, is what should be called middle classification of population. A generation or so ago, we were still predominantly working class; we are now predominantly middle class. I don't think it is a matter of our style of life, income, etc. It is a matter of how we look at people. It is the amount of importance we attach to self-improvement and community service. An enormous amount of interest goes into doing good; doing good has, in the last few years, become a major industry.

You are veterans in this process, true; but I think if you try to cast a balance as far as the working class is concerned, the transition in our nation from a working-class society to a middle-class society has meant,an enormous loss of influence to the working class. The working class is ruled out of-the political situation because the dominant middle class says political machines run the city unprofitably and that the city should be run by experts.

Unfortunately for the Negro, who has come on the urban scene rather late, we still have the working class and the lower class. He is deprived of the only style of politics in which people of this class have any interest or any ability to cope. Be is in cities across the United States that are better governed than formerly. There i9 not a single city in the United States where a crook would be welcome. If you are young enough, you may think that it was never any different, but I assure you it was. I do not want to get into any futile arLumentsabout whether a par- ticular man was or was not a crook, but you may recall thetitle of the book written by Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities. The shame of the cities was organized corruption. It was from the top down. It was taken for granted at the turn of the century that in everycity in the United States the people running city governments were crooks. Some people still think that is true. I think they are wrong.

Let me come back to my main point. I am saying that the middle classification in politics in American cities has denied the workingclass in politics. The middle class is now trying to figure out how tooffer some bureaucratic good government as anequivalent for the satisfactions and opportunities that the working class used to getthrough the machine.

To summarize what I have said so far, thelower class has been ruled out of participation permanently by nature of theculture. The working class is diminishing in numbers and has been ruled outlargely by the middle classification of America and the widespread acceptanceof middle- class mores in city government.

Now to come to the final part of the answer: I think that for the cities to have the poor on committees in these poverty programsis so much hogwash. It is window dressing. We are using and manipulating these people for the purpose of the bureaucracy. Behind it is a certain socio- logical theory which I consider poppycock; mainly, thatthe masses of people are alienated, they are suffering from thesociological disease . called anomie, and that the way to cure that isinvolvement. Poppycock: I don't think there 4, any such disease. And if there were, putting a few of them on some committee would not help the masses. You cannot cure a disease by putting anyone on a committee.Furthermore, very few get on committees. They are not taken seriously. They are just somebody to be talked at by the administrators who have access to thelaws and regula- tions to prepare the applications from Washington orThe Ford Foundation.

Q. Then, how do you involve people in a community, todevelop a functioning community, which includes a personalinvolvement in the urban decision-making process?

A. My answer to that question, in respect to thelower class, is that you are not going to get them involved. I do not think you can change the outlook and style of life of awhole class of people by some kind of manipulation or exhortation. Now if you say, "in the long run," thenthe question is this: How can we somehow bring these people outof the sub- culture, out of the lower class and theworking class into the middle class? In the long run, it seems to methat the way to do it (and it only works with some, apparently) is to afford themreal, honest-to-God opportunities to get ahead in the middle-classworld.

Take the convenient example of theNegro youth from a lower-class home, who knows better than mostmiddle-class people that if he graduates from high school, he is still going tobe a car washer. And as long as that is true, the rational thing isfor him to enjoy life as he may and If you L not knock himself out trying to learnabout Shakespeare's plays. -43- can find a way to arrange the matter so the lower-classpeople have a genuine chance to move up the scale,a good number of them will be shaken loose. Boys like that will see sooner thanyou might expect that there is some advantage in going to school.

To be a little more concrete about it, how dowe offer opportunity? I think we ought to maintain a very highlevel of employment, a much higher level than we have ever maintained. The opportunity for jobs for the poorest of poor is crucial (evenas it is for handicapped people and for people who are stupid). They certainly ought to be given theoppor- tunity to get a job within their capacity to makeprogress. I think for men, especially, this is the most important sphere of life.

Q. Can we concentrate political power intoeven smaller groups?

A. I suppose so. We certainly have gone a longway toward it. The trend of recent years has been to centralize formalauthority, done largely in the name of giving the professional greaterscope. The professional expert insists that he has to havemore elbow room, so please keep him from voters and other ignorant and unexpert help.The chief executives of the city have more formal authority now than theyever had before, but they still do not have very much by the standards of otherdemocratic countries.

Take for example the London County Council. There you have a miniature cabinet, a leader who is like a Prime Minister. He is the choice for leader through the Labor Party which always has beena powerful party in London. He has an executive committee of his own choice to helphim; but as long as his party is in the majority in Council, heruns it. The leader of the County Council does not have to bribeor sell, induce or coerce others to support that power; he has it there by right of formal political author- ity. Our tendency has been more toward this form of centralization.

The weaker you make a city government, either its formal authorityor its ability to offer material incentives, themore sensitive you make it to the outcries of decent or indecent small minorities. New York City, for example, has been anguishing for years over the question ofa lower Man- hattan roadway. Something like 1200 shopkeepers and others would be disturbed by this road. For years now, the issue has remained unsettled, although building of the highway has been insome kind of a plan for 40 years. Nothing has been done about it because 1200 peopleare highly motivated to object. The New York City system is very precariously bal- anced, where 1200 votes can paralyze action.

In most American cities now, thanks to the middle classification, ward or district organizations no longer exist; theyno longer have any power. If there are six councilmen elected at large, even thoughmore responsibility is felt generally to people in the district where they live, they do not waste time doing favors because there are no returns. The neighborhoods have declined impolitical influence with a loss of ward representation. When the neighborhood wants political influence it must now exert it directly either on bureaucrats or on the Mayor system. I, myself, would prefer a system like Chicago's where you still havea ward r system; councilmen are elected aid persistently and effectively represent ward interests. -44- But I feel that Chicago hasa strong Mayor. I don't think there has ever been a single issue in Mayor Daley'smany years of office on which the council has blocked him. Of the 50 members of the council, where 40to 49 are Democrats, I do not think he hasever had less than 40-odd of them with him. This is not to say that Daley is notsensitive to ward com- mitteemen and what they want in theirwards. It seems to me that here is a good system for combining city-wide influence andlocal influence.

Q. In most elections today, the candidate isdependent on campaign contributions and, therefore, he is beholdento contributors. They tend to be some form of power elite. Is there any way of diminishing their influence?

A. One way of diminishing their influence wouldbe to increase the influence of other competinggroups. Most of the money nowadays is spent for television time. It is pretty obvious thereare ways a candidate can have access to a television screen without dependingon the owners of department stores to provide themoney. If the city is large enoughyou could get a kind of pluralpower situation: the labor union, the neigh- borhood home owners' association, businesses whichare big enough and varied enough so no one has monopolisticpower.

Q. Where do large, nonpolitical organizationsfit into your model of political influence?

A. Civic controversies or issues in Chicago, andI think in most cities, arise out of the needs of large formalorganizations looking out for their own welfare. One might take, just for example, the issue between the Michael Reese Hospital and the County Hospital. Michael Reese wanted a unit of the County Hospital builton the South Side, in order to be relieved of some of the burden of charitable hospitalservice it was giving. The County Hospital wanted to expandon the West Side. The maintenance needs of these two hospitals were the underlyingengines of influence here. The real needs of such organizationswere not put forward in such unvar- nished terms, however. They were varnished very thoroughly with several coats, generally in terms of the conception of public interest;not neces- sarily a conception that everyone would share.As with all big organiza- tions, they had to look after their maintenance needs in terms ofan alleged conception of real public interest.

Q. Is there a mechanism to reconcile the interests of the city dwellers with those of the city's outer ring and suburbs?

A. Let us look first at the word "reconcile."I don't think there is any mechanism to reconcile these interests becausethese interests are in many ways irreconcilable. The question is who is going to be taxed, let us say, for improvements in the transportations;,stem? We who live in the central city are using the buses andyou people in the suburbs use your cars. Some of these things,are irrecbncilable.So, if you do not mind,'I would like to substitute the word "manage"or "compromise."

Are there mechanisms to manage or comprcmise the issuesof city dwellers with those of dwellers in the outer ring?Yes, there are

-45- V

mechanisms. If you want to be more particular about it, there are politi- cal heads such as the mayor, county supervisor, governor, who, if they see fit, can make deals among themselves on such matters.There are also independent or quasi-independent public and private agencies which have heads representing their organizations. There are, for example, sanitary districts, water districts, and department heads; they can make ad hoc agreements among themselves, and they do. This is the way things get done.

Q. What is taking the place of the political machine? What should?

A One way of looking at it is that nothing is taking the place of the political machine. Ihsofar as the political machine functions to give a channel of political eNpression and social mobility to the working class, I do not think anything can take its place; that was part of my complaint earlier. From the standpoint of another function, how does power become centralized? How is authority centralized? The answer is a mixed one. It is not at all clear to me whether the political machine's function has been entirely taken over by other means.The other means that has been offered, and to some extent accepted, is in the form of centralization of formal authority in the position of the Mayor. He has planning of the budget; he has more weight with his city council. fl

Without being able to prove this point, I think the increases in formal centralization have not equaled the concurrent decreases in informal centralization. On one hand the Mayor has been told he must not be a machine boss, as we in the middle class will not tolerate it; instead we will give formal authority, but we have never given him enough formal authority to compensate for the loss of informal authority. I think Mayor Daley's position is growing weaker every week. I feel that the city gov- ernments of these United States in the last 20 or 30 years have become less competent to manage political conflict because of this weakening. They have lost their political muscles without gaining legal muscles sufficient to make up the loss.

The real question is: What kind of world would it be nice to live in? I will say the answer to that is very clear and unambiguous. As far as politics is concerned, the kind of a world that it would be nice would be a world in which every citizen considered every question rationally, was just in spirit, and acted with great prudence and wisdom. In such a case you would still have power problems. Such people would still disagree; it is auite possible .for prudent, reasonable people to disagree. They have to find some way of reconciling their differences. In a democracy the ideal would be to have all decisions made on a basis of rational discussion, with all citi-

zens participating according to their capacity and treated with respect--a rl Quaker meeting.

Some of you may wonder what I think of the human material that we have to deal with, how close an approximation to the ideal can we get? My answer is, at the present time, not very close. People in the metro- politan areas are not Quakers, and they are not all inclined to be thought- ful, reasonable people. They must be governed. Government is not a matter of an ongoing public opinion poll, where you find out what everybody wants and then do that; or a Quaker meeting in which you want to find out what they want, or encourage them to interact until theyagree on what they want. It is a matter of forcing some people who want thewrong things to do what the society requires them to do whether they like itor not.

Q. Can you describe a political model which has been effective for working class groups?

A. Sure. I have already described oneat length--the political machine is model par excellence. This machine is the great American inven- tion for bringing the working class into active participation ingovernment.

I personally think it is a great shame that the politicalmachine has gone out of being in the central cities of the United States. I think that we have knocked out a whole range of rungs on the ladder ofsuccess in American life, because this mode of opportunity isno longer available to the working class--especially the Negro working class. Not only political corruption, but organized crime has beenone of the principal modes of capital stimulation for the lower working class. Thanks to Robert Kennedy and others, it looks like we are at last gettinga crackdown on organized crime. Organized crime, even petty gambling, in American citieshas been largely preempted by ethnic groups other than the Negro,anyway But here is another avenue of ascent that is lost.

Let us say we are separating the classes in American life. The middle class has now absorbed much of the working classso that the only people who remain are unskilled. It is harder now to move from unskilled jobs to skilled jobs. The separation between the classes is widening. I think it is too bad. Not only is it a matter of simple human justice that those who want to move upward should be able to doso (although I would be the last one to insist that they must do so), but it represents in the long run a change of the fundamental conceptions of the society. We are liable to end up two societies, a lower class and a middle class.

Q. There is one point--I am not in favor of theresurgence of organized crime.

A. Well, wait a minute, do not laugh toosoon about that, because a couple of people have ccme out for it. Seriously, some sociologists have advanced the theory that when you have gangs--serious, business-likegangs- - it is a very important mechanism for controlling the behavior of lower- class youths.

Q. There are different uses of the term "poor."As I remember, when you were originally asked this question about involving of the poor, you answered it in terms of what you call the lower-class culture. I propose that you distinguish, so that we are sure to Understandyou, between those who participate in the lower-class culture whichyou classify in a nut- shell as "just being interested in scratching yourself in the sun," and those who are the working-class poor. Specifically, I believe many of us see three different levels of participation of the "poor" in the anti- poverty program, only one of which you have discussed yourself; namely, participation of representatives of thepoor on policy-making boards of various 0E0 programs. There is also the matter of organized participa- tion of the poor (the working-class poor, I presume)as paid or

-4+7- 'No

partially subsidized sub-professional workers of one type or another in connection with programs of community interest.Then, there is a third level which has to do with involving them in organizations on the neigh- borhood level. Through this they become aware of their problems and acquire a structure, an individual sense of identification, a voice in decision making, that is characterized by the social action group. Could you speak specifically about these three levels?

A. Some people are poor who lack material resources to maintain a minimum standard of living. Obviously, they can bekof any social class. We have all heard of people who have fallen on hard times.By and large, the poor are working class and lower class. "Lower" would pretty well have to be poor unless somebody gives them money, and the working class is poor because of its misfortune and the fact that many are unskilled or semi- skilled and do not earn a great deal of money.As for the working-class and middle-class poor, there are very few middle-class poor among whites. The middle class of Negroes, we are all very aware, is in a very different situation. Discrimination in jobs, housing, education, causes more poor in the Negro middle class than in the white. The poor that we are primar- ily talking about are the working class- -who have suffered some misfortune like unemployment or sickness--and the lower class.

The problem that concerns everybody, I think, is the perpetuation and enlargement of kinds of poverty. Poverty as I define it is cultural poverty. In a culture of poverty, generation after generation people become more and more alienated from normal community life, they become less and less interested in education or improvement and are harder and harder to reach. It is possible that in society we may find that we have a very significant residue of these people who are poor culturally, not economically. We could raise their income by half, or let us say double it, and they would still be poor in the sense that they would live in misery. They would still have a high degree of delinquency. They would still have a lack of normal attachment to community. This problem is not an income problem, which is what I think most people are talking about when they talk about the problem of poverty.

There is confusion here. What good does it do to put the economi- cally poor, who are not also culturally poor, on these War on Poverty boards? Probably it is no worse than the FTA, let us say. The FTA is, in many cases, the useful communication link between school and parents;

but what would be the value of the FTA as a mechanism for bringing about f involvement? The involvement in community does not have to be a politi- cal community in the sense of the city or the state or even the neigh- L borhood. It could be the community in the sense" that a-group of people feel that they share some interest.That is the first step: To learn r how to be a member of a community. It is an absolutely inevitable com- mutation of mind in order to be middle class or upper working class. In fact, I think that is what we mean: learning to acquire a taste for this kind of behavior, just as you acquire a taste for neckties rather

. than open shirts.

-48- It is the pattern of behavior that moves with a certain class standing. You do not have to bureaucratize it by settingup organi- zations to involve people in community life to bring aboutsome- thing--it is going to happen anyway. You do not have to teach a fish to swim; put him in the water. You take the working-class person who has mobility, put him in a situation where he can move, and he'll move. Put thb fish in water, never mind teaching him how to swim.

Q. How would you define the "public interest"?

A. In a city there is only a series of interest, either in con- cert or collision. You have an eauilibrium or balance of forces at any one time. There is no "natural law" as a determinant of public interest. By exercising moral responsibility and prudence, and by trying to take into account a wide range of community interests, you may approximate public interest. But even in a society of angels there would be no agreement on the public interest.

Now, this bears thinking about. And I come back to a much earlier point. There is a constant choice which you have.Do you wish to have broader responsibility and decentralization of decision making, or do you want centralization?Broader responsibility is not workable in heterogeneous cities, unless you accept the idea of informal centrali- zation through "corruption," through aberrations of moral behavior. Here we have, in brief, the horns of the dilemma.

-49- 5. ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

At this point, conference participants have had three days and two evenings of theory, information, opinion about the nature of the metropolis and about processes by which community decisions are made. Sources have been both literature and lecturers. Intermixed, participants have also had several hours in Work Groups to clarify facts, to hear one another's views, to deepen comprehension of the city-in-action. Participants have also come to know and better understand one another. These Work Groups were the major learning activity of the three following sessions. The staff role took on less of an instructional and more of a facilitating quality.

A second change was to move from discussion of theory to participant practice in using frameworks or instruments for diagnosing decision making in urban settings. Two such instruments were introduced briefly to the conference. One was termed the "Rational- Technical and Social Process Two-Dimensional Framework," the other "Force Field Analysis."The follow- ing sections describe both.

A third focus was upon participants as decision-makers and upon inves- tigation of the kinds of urban problems "back home" in which they were actually involved.

The following pages look at two of the Work Groups. Two sessions were devoted to analysis of decision making with the groupsthemselves constituting learning laboratories for relating theory to actual partic- ipant behavior.

Group I: The Rational-Technical-Social Process Framework

Comprised of eight men and one woman, Group I had just had coffee, after seeing the film, "How Things Get Done," part of the National Educa- tional Television series on Metropolis--Creator or Destroyer.

After eight sessions members were relatively comfortable together. Through this session, however, they seemed to struggle on thethree-horned dilemma of trying to understand abstract ideas and relate these to back- home urban problems, while simultaneously dealing with problems of the group as people trying to communicateand work together. These needs were kept in relatively productive balance.

The film was dissected in terms of the major interest groupings appearing in the narrative: A true situation in which a 12-block small- business area in New York is selected by a body of citizens, on which to build a housing cooperative. The major interests involved were the co-op group, the businesses(management and labor) in the pinpointed area, and the city government. The businesses, not surprisingly, did not wish to relocate. Municipal .nits gathered facts and helped moder- ate differences between the other two interests, but delayed in the use of governmental power. The actions of each then was plotted on a "RASP" grid.

50 "RASP" stands for the "Rational-technical" dimension of decision making (emphasis on scientific method, rationality, goal orientation, stress on hard facts) and for "Social Process" dimensions(stress on the needs of people, their biases, power differentials, attitudes,relation- ships and the like). These appear in four quadrants of the grid as 1 follows:

Two Dimensional Framework for Analysis of Community Decision Making: Rational-technical and Social Process (RASP)

IMINDMIlar

(High) 5 5-1 Decisions governed by 5-5 Decisions arrived at by technical considerations; experts and non-experts r emphasis on economic, working together; emphasis physical and other 'hard' on relating needs and inter- Focus on facts; use of rational ests of people to 'hard' Rational- methods and tools. data; use of collaborative technical %/methods based on sources of Dimension social solidarity.

1-1 Decisions not made 1-5 Decisions governed by centrally; outcomes a political considerations 2 function of independent or citizen non-experts; action (or non-action) emphasis on needs and of diverse groups with interests of people; use little or no contact or of negotiation, persuasion consultation; little or and other methods. no concern with methods.

1 2 3 5

(Low) (High)

Focus on Social Process Dimension

This "Two Dimensional Framework" was developed by the training staff as a conceptual tool by which to try to analyze urban decision making, and presented in general session by Donald Klein. 1/The intent was to specify one way to look at community action, value orientations, interest-groupstyles of behaving, and the like.

1/ This "Two-Dimensional Framework" is an adaptation of the work by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton in their book, "The ManagerialGrid." Houston: Gulf, 1964) .

r -51-

L1 4

3.

Added to this two-dimensional scheme was a five-phased time sequence in the decision- making process: U General time phases in the decision-making sequence

A-Awareness of a problem or issue or need B-Becoming familiar with the problem; data gathering and defining the problem C-Considering alternatives D-Deciding on a course of action E-Effecting or implementing the course of action

With these concepts to work with, Group I began to analyze the deci- sion making evidenced in the film, using the two grid dimensions and the decision sequence in its work. Shortly it produced a work sheet with these entries:

RASP WORK SHEET

(High) 1

14- Z-C X-C Rational- A'sq technical N.N Z-AB X-B

/i.

Y B - Y-C X-P.

(Low) 2 3 14- 5 (High)

SCCIAL PRCCESS

Phases of decisions: Groups Involved: r

A-Awareness of problem X-Co-op group B-Becoming familiar with the problem Y-Businesses C-Considering alternatives Z-Municipal government D-Deciding a course of action E-Effecting the course of action

The group found it difficult to plot the process of more than one interest segment at a time. In a sense, using the work sheet to analyze the film's complex social action was frustrating. For example, did the Co-op (X in the diagram) really start its sequence relatively high on *it

-52- social process (3) and all that low (1) with regard to rational-technical aspects? Were the business interests (Y) normally process-oriented,or merely reacting to the "decision" of the Co-op?

Yet Group I began to see that lack of a flexible blend of rational- technical and social process dimensions can have a profound effect on urban decisions. It also saw where various groups acting or reacting at various points on the grid create a set of vectors which influence deci- sions--or cause a stalemate.

Said one member: "The grid doesn't solve anything, but it helps us understand the decision-making process, where we are and where we want to be."

The staff member present suggested that group members discuss how they tended to act as individuals, in relation to the grid. Experimen- tally, one participant asked all to "rate" him, as judged by watching him in previous group sessions. His composite grid rating by the group tended toward the rational-technical axis (e.g., 4:2--4 on rational-technical behavior, 2 on social concerns). Others admitted to the same tendency, but as one urban planner confessed:

"I have been high on the rational-technical, but I want to move toward social process--to relate both the social and technical factors. The trouble is, I do not feel as confident personally on the social process dimension. What I should do is get someone on my staff who knows how to operate on that track."

"Maybe you will, after this conference," offered a community organi- zation executive.

The planner nodded.

On the whole, Group I felt from its practice session more able to analyze the decision-making process and perceive the importance of search- ing for more than one solution to community problems--in short, developing a wider range of alternatives.From the documentary film also came the insight that numerous decision points are reached by urban action groups, often without the power to implement.Without this power a decision is merely a proposal which can-Fe-EEC-Med or rejected by other groups- - especially the group or coalition which can control action.

Beyond this, Group I members began to look at their personal styles of working toward decisions, and to question the adequacy of these styles. The session seemed to sharpen sensitivity to the social-psychological dimension in decision making.

-53- Group II: The Force Field Framework

Group II deliberated first-about thepragmatic value of Force Field Analysis. Curtis Mial, in a short generalsession, described FFAas another framework fora more systematic diagnosis of forces presentin community problem situations. FFA is a diagnostic toolor concept intro- duced by Kurt Lewin.With a goal defined asa state toward which a social system (or an individual)wishes to move, there are driving forces of varying strength' impellingaction toward the goal, but also restraining forces impeding movementtoward the intended objective. These two sets of forces createa more or less unstable balance. Until driving forces are increased in numberor strength, or restraining forces reduced, progress toward the goal will be relativelyimmobilized, the balance will be "quasi-stationary."

Diagrammatically, this conceptappears as follows:

The Goal

, Restraining t.I, Forces vit Status Quo

Driving Forces.71'

Group II, perhaps out of fatigue fromthe packed conference schedule and resistance to the heavycontent of the program, at firstwas reluctant to use the Force Field Analysis ideain an applied way, discussing itpurely as a theoretical model. But its possible value becameintriguing. The group chose to experiment with FFA by dividinginto two subgroups. One took the point of view of the citizenco-op housing organization from the ea/Tier film, "How Things Get Done." 1/The second undertookan FFA from the point of view of the businessmanagers and employees (in the film) in the area marked for destructionby the housing co-op plan,

The practice session, using FFAas an analytical instrument, was revealing. First of all, each subgroup foundit much easier to identify driving forces than restrainingones (including those taking the citizen co-op point of view, for which members foundlittle sympathy).

One tentative conclusionwas that people with an objective'tend to perceive forces "going for them"while ignoring those opposing their purpose.

A second insight was perceived thatdriving-restraining forces depend almost wholly on your point ofreference. When two or more groupsare en- meshed in an urban decision, theymay well not share the same goal-- perhaps even hold opposing goals. Driving forces for one organization

1/ See previoussection. -54- may be seen as the restraining forces for the second. This proved to be precisely the case in the practice run of Work Group II. One of the com- munity segments either would have to overwhelm its.oppositionin order to get a decision which moved toward its goal--or else the goal must become a compromise solution to the problem which two or more parties could accept. Only then would opposition diminish and opposing interests not function as restraining forces in the change system.

This first experience became the base in Group II for workon back- home problems in decision making. It divided into three consulting teams of three members. Each team spent a period dealing with one member's situation, with the other two helping in analysis.

The three consulting teams checked back, after the first round, to compare notes. The complexity of their own decision-making situations had struck home. A too -quick tendency to move from "diagnosis to prognosis" was likewise evident. In one trio, for example, the member whose problem had been subjected to investigation implicitly showed that shewas dis- satisfied with the results.The analysis was either too superficial or her consultants had arrived at procedures inappropriate toher and her situation. It may also have been that she could not accept theirpro- posals because of a deep difference in value orientation and personal strategy for community action.

At the next session the results were generallymore satisfying. To take an illustration, a member ofone consulting team presented his goal: to create more employment and better transportation for residents ofone Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles. The staff of his agency, Neighborhood Organization of Watts, (called NOW), wants to establishan efficient wrecking yard where old and damaged cars can be restored (or soldfor junk); thus providing work formen skilled in mechanics, inexpensive transportation for job-holders currently required to spend hours each day on intricate bus systems, and cash to increase capitalizationof the wrecking yard. Using the FFA instrument, the team first arrived at this analysis:

Driving Forces Restraining Forces

Need of people in Watts for jobs Many see a wrecking yard as a neigh- WI borhood eyesore (while in fact it

Need for fast transportation to be fenced and made attractive) 1E31\ jobs outside Watts C Thehe enterprise is viewed as a threat K Wrecking yard wou2.d be close to to similar private businesses in men with skills, but not employ- the area N ed (skills learned from life- G long tinkering with cars) Fairly heavy initial capital is required for equipment, payroll, Y Small business loans are and the like A available Reluctance of the NOW board of Dl NOW is an organized group with directors (interracial and middle- resources to aid the project class in composition) to risk such a venture -55- Further analysis brought out clearly that the compelling resistant factor is the NOW board itself, which will make the decision whether to go ahead with the project. The trio, helped by the rest of Group II, progressed to a More selective objective: getting the board to back the wrecking-yard project. A summary of results, again plotted on an FFA chart, appeared in this form:

Driving Forces Restraining Forces

From Group II's work, including his own consulting team, the NOW NOW board members are sincere, yet staff member better understands tend to be status-seekers and not A; J power relationships in the board innovators. C and its decision-making process. K They are not fully aware of the I He sees need to dramatize Watts' poverty problem in Watts, despite N probleMs to the board and better the 1965 summer riot. G inforMrit on conditions \ They lean toward conservative of The need is for the board to get solutions rather than adven- a "we" feeling toward neighbor- turous ones. NOW / hood and the staff, more sense of identify. B

Staff member expre*es a The staff member -is two-levels A° /I greater feeling of conficence below the decision-makers of 11/ and support as a result of the board. He must work with and DI membership in Group II. He through his director, a factor feels hopeful about working which tends to diffuse his own with his NCW director in impact--despite close relations developing an "educational between the director and himself. and cooperative approach" to the board.

The participant from Watts in no sense had "solved" his back-home problem, or achieved his organization's goal. But the help of his consulting team, augmented by the rest of the group,.did seem to give him more "leverage" potential. He understood the decision-making com- plex better, and he saw alternative behavior on the part of himself and his staff colleagues. He seemed strengthened, moreover, by the in- sightfulness, sincerity and concern of his peers in the group. In general, the group seemed to see the Totential help to be gained by using theory and methods from the behavioral sciences in community action efforts.

-56- At one point a Group II member commented, referring to the confer- ence:

"I am getting more here than I realized. The question is what to do with it. But that is like asking the Mayor of Chicago what he would do with it; nothing directly, but it makes a difference. I came won- dering who are the urban decision-makers. Now I see that we are. I am. Maybe we are small decision-makers, but we have the means to influence the top decision-makers if we understand the process and our leverage points."

The participant from NOW was not a "top" decision-maker in metropol- itan Los Angeles. Yet he had seen a way to be a more significant "effector" in the decision-making process of his neighborhood--which is

a part of Watts, and a part of Los Angeles. . 6 TWO DECISION-MAKING STRATEGIES

Emerging from the Conferende, by midpoint, was a mounting concern among participants and staff about two approaches to intentional social change. One was termed the "conflict-oppositional" strategy; the other the "collaboration-integrative" strategy for getting urban decisions made.

Two sessions were devoted to considering these approaches. Interest groups were formed around each strategy, to explore major components and implications. In fidelity to the theme of "a conference of peers," both staff members and participants chose to have. their interest group consider the following issues and to report back to the other groups:

1. When and in what situations does this strategy seem appropriate?

2. What are the moral-ethical questions involved?

3. What are the significant methods employed?

1.. What are the advantages, disadvantages, and limitations?

A third interest group focused on other dimensions of community action against poverty.

The Conflict-Oppositional Strategy

This interest group chose to explore a specific community conflict situation in which one of the participants had been centrally involved. The group then elected to report back by dramatizing the situation. An actual dispute between a supermarket and its neighborhood patrons in Watts, Los Angeles, after the rebellion in the summer of 1965, was acted out in two sequential scenes.

Scene One was a conference of community citizens complaining about the local supermarket's practices. Gripes included half-spoiled meat, wilted garden produce, a 30-cent charge for cashing checks--though other grocery stores cashed checks as a courtesy--prices on items as much as 30% higher than other stores, flies and litter inside the supermarket. What strategy would change this situation?Proposals like burning the store were shelved until discussions could be held with the store owner and with the County Health Department.

A Word of Background mo.10011m.

The store owner refused to talk with the delegates frcm the neighbor- hood, and the County Health Supervisor was evasive. So a day-and-a-half picket of the store was organized, starting on Friday night. Three hundred people participated in spite of the usual Friday night distractions.The turnout was so large there weren't enough signs to go around. Fifteen n people were in the store, instead of the usual 100-150 customers. Trans- portation pools were organized to take people Without cars to other shopping areas. -58- After the picketing, the store owner agreed to meet with representa- tives of the new neighborhood organization and County Health officers, in a place a mile distant to avoid publicity and intrusion by localpoliticians.

In Scene Two, the list of neighborhood complaints was laid before the supermarket owner, and an appeal was made to the health inspector to be more stringent in his inspection. The owner then presented his case: All his employees were Negro, $6500 had been spent recently on store improve- ments, many checks bounced, grocery carts disappeared, kids shoplifted and destroyed property, including the screen doors--all of which forced price increases to cover the greater costs of operation.

This dual presentation of complaints led to concessions by both sides. The storekeeper pledged to change his policy on charges for check-cashing, to clean up .the alley--though it was public property--and to repair thescreens and meat refrigerator, provided time were allowed to do this. In return the community leaders agreed to pass the word around in the neighborhood that carts should be returned (one leader said, "I'll bring mine back").Mothers would try to keep children out of the store.The meeting ended in a spirit of cautious, semi-trusting accommodation and compromise.

When the Watts case as depicted in the role-playing was analyzed, these elements emerged:

1. Data were collected by talking with residents and shared at a community meeting which 200 attended. There was general agreement that this was the problem to tackle.

2. A clear-cut target was set with a specific list of complaints to present for action.

3. Those people who were responsible for the conditions and who were able to change them were contacted personally.

4, It was decided to keep out people extraneous to this specific issue, including politicians and newspaper reporters.

5. A request for negotiation was made, but ignored.

6 The neighborhood made a show of strength, through picketing and boycott. This step created a conflict confrontation in which the store owner suffered financially, and the neighborhoodgained a sense of solidarity.

7. When the store owner expressed willingness to talk, community leaders came to the meeting, negotiating from a stronger position and with neighborhood support.

8. Both parties made concessions, growing out of increased understanding of each other and a shared problem.

9. The community group had developed strength and in the process had also learned to see the other side. As one conferee put it,

-59- "The store owner. suffered financial loss, so he was willing to talk. The community group was able to bargain from a position of strength. They had demonstrated their power to the store owner and they had convinced themselves of their own strength in the demonstration. There were com- promises on all points that were raised. The group was in. such a posi- tion of strength that they were ready to make concessions to the store owner that seemed reasonable, like keeping the kids from taking things."

10. The process continues, in which group activity develops solidarity. An important aspect of this is the training of citizens. For example, people learned how to compare food prices in various stores and learned about the county health regulations applying to supermarkets.

The case of one Watts neighborhood illustrated certain dimensions of a conflict-oppositional approach.Demonstrated cogently was the method by which, first, the dormant citizenry of a neighborhood comes alive through involvement in action on an immediately relevant problem. Secondly, by establishing a greater degree of unity and showing a new power base countervailing established power, the opposition can negotiate more or less from parity positions. If negotiation is the goal, then this strategy of decision making progresses in the 'direction of "collaboration" among equals. It is significant that conflict was in this case not the end but rather negotiation and compromise.

The Collaboration-Integrative Strategy

In a paroxysm of alliteration, the second interest group identified what was called the "Seven C's of the Cooperative Process."These were the major components:

1. Common (orshared) interest--mutuality must exist if a "community" exists.

2. Catalyst--a person, group, or groups willing and able to bring together the parties in the community with a mutual concern.

3. Communication- -the means of sharing and understanding in- formation and feelings among interacting persons and groups.

4. Chance--motivation to take a chance, to risk giving up something in return for the probability of getting closer to the shared goal.

5. Confidence--the parties involved developing trust in each other.

6. Contribution--willingness to use one's resources in the joint undertaking.

7. Consensus--finally agreeing, compromising, reaching a decision which the collaborating parties can accept. -6o- Where these components can be invoked, in whatever sequence, changes of behavior (attitudes, values, actions) and of relationships tend to follow, improving the climate of the community for further collaboration and integration.

Later, in general discussion, an eighth "C" was proposed:

8. Clout--Less powerful parties need to gain strength or prestige through widespread participation, persuasion, or other means, in order to work with more powerful parties on a more equal or'neat-equal basis.

Diagramatically, these components were shown thus:

The Cooperative Process

Communication

Catalyst Clout

Common Change of Behavior Interest and Climate Consensus

Chance Confidence

Contribution

This interest group noted that its construct tends to be too ideal, too general. It does not take into account that love, respect, distrust, and hostility are all potentially present in any collaborative relation- ship, and that.both suspicion and cooperative intent prevail at various moments in the process.

To illustrate the components in the cooperative process, a case history from Boston was related by one participant. In the mid-fifties the city was almost paralyzed by serious financial conditions. The basic problem was cleavage between the "Yankee" financiers and industrialists who "owned the city," and the Irish Catholic politicians who "ran it."

The Boston College staff not only perceived the problem, but also experienced a growing opinion that it needed more "contact with people" and more relevancy to community affairs.As a consequence, the institu- tion acted as catalyst to bring high-placed leaders of the Irish and Yankees together. Also included were the press, labor representatives, and voluntary association heads--200 people in all.

This gathering of decision-makers was called the Boston Citizens Seminar, a series of monthly meetings which has continued for many years. The design called for coffee at 4 P.M., after participants donned name tags. A substantive presentation followed, along with open discussion

-61 of the subject. with particularattention to local pertinence.A "social hour" (vital foremergence of informal relationships) and dinner ended, each program at about 8 P.M.

Some of the tangible results ofthis collaboration:

A Metropolitan Planning Councilwas formed and has been working at the problems of thegreater Boston area;

A transportation authoritywas established for the entire urban area, thus radically improvingaccess not only to Boston from surrounding cities andsuburbs, but among these larger and smaller municipalities;

Better communicationcame through improved press and broadcasting coverage of city affairs.

The remarkable change, however,wasin the less tangiblezone.

"These seminars had a dramatic impact,especially in the first years," according to the Bostonian. "Now I do not want tosay everything is solved. But a remarkable thing has hapilened,whether you want to call it behavioral change or change inattitudes and values; I like tothink that it is a change in socialenvironments The whole environment of Boston has changed. You no longer find this attitudeof destructiveness. Problems we have, but there hasbeen movement and building andconstruc- tiveness in the city, where therewas nothing going on before."

It was stressed, however, thatconflicts among groups still exist, with forces continuing tooppose some of the changes. Consensus has not been synonymous with unanimity.

After considering both the conflictand collaborative strategies,the conference group was struck that thedifference between them is notas sharp as some had believed.The situation, the goal, and theassumptions of the catalysts are factors whichmay make one or the other appropriate. One strategy may flow into the other inthe action sequence.

The conflict presentation demonstrated.that cooperationwas needed within the citizengroup itself in order to build cohesion. Unity, disci- pline, and skill thengave it the power--or clout--to join theissue, to create conditions whereby thereis parity of strength betweencontestants in settling the controversy.Yet the direction of the citizenorganiza- tion was toward a rational-socialprocess of discovering consensus by "forcing a dialogue."Conflict tactics--suchas the boycott--were used to open communication between theparties. The danger here, on the other hand, is that heavy stressmay be upon disagreement, upon theuse of power and upon limiting thealternatives in the final decision. And anger expressed by both partiesmay not get transmuted from disdain to mutual confidence. Norms of hostility, set at the start,may persist.

62 But uses of the collaborative strategy also are limited. Conference participants and staff were aware that it can function only if all parties are present. In a community there may be shared interests as a starting point. But there may also be opposing interests. Nego- tiation cannot take place, interchange cannot begin, if there cannot be a confrontation of differences.Differentials in power, or hostile attitudes, may prevent getting together.At the same time elite parties may exclude others potentially involved; shutthem out in order to achieve consensus, to cloak opposition. Parties may also try to main-' tain a cooperative relationship by avoiding vital issues and settling for agreement on superficial matters. In the long run the distinctive character of each collaborating group may become weakened under the pressure to maintain joint action, to project the image ofbeing "co- operative."

In effect, the conference came to see the two strategies, conflict- oppositional and collaborative-integrative, expressed generally as two extremes, as tending to meet in the broad middle mze, at least in practice.

The "assumptions" of the catalyst were seen as conditioning and therefore as crucial, whether only disagreements are stressed, whether agreements and potential commonalities are expected to predominate, or whether both are countenanced, and a free range of approaches is avail- able to decision-makers.

It almost seemed the sense of the meeting that, following the con -. ference discourse, members were less inclined to embrace either strategy wholly. An eclectic flexibility, in essence, might be the most func- tional strategy. 7. COMMUNITY ACTION IN THE WAR ON POVERTY

The interest group on Community Action Against Poverty was composed primarily of persons engaged in the war on poverty in Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit and other cities.

The issue on which this group centered was how to get "maximum feas- ible participation" of the poor in urban decisions. But this, as with the other two groups, 'lso raised the concern of changes in the existing urban control structure which can make this participation possible.

No doubt was expressed that the poor potentially can participate at all levels; not as figureheads named to community or neighborhood action committees, but as equals with middle-class members in the creation and guidance of anti-poverty programs (Dr. Banfield to the contrary, notwith- standing). To achieve this possibility, however, certain conditions must exist. One is that the disadvantaged person so serving is chosen by his peers rather than selected by someone in the prevailing political-social power structure. Thus, he feels his neighbors and neighborhood are behind him, that he represents them. He also needs to see enough of his own kind working with him that he feels like one of several--has a shared identity. Finally, he has the potential competence to serve well--but this needs to be nurtured through the experience of membership and even through deliber- ate training. Constant support from professional staffers is a require- ment, as friendly advisors and understanding teachers.

From the outset, the interest group asserted poor people have con- tributions to make. TheAeinclude:

1. Knowledge and understanding of their own poverty-ridden condition, of the.Lr problems and needs.

2. Know-how to make remedial programs, intended to over- come cultural deprivation, function successfully in their neighborhood.

3. Conscience--or a deep concern ft a better life for themselves and other poor people.

Spokesmen for the group reported that these aualities already have been demonstrated in community action programs, but cautioned that poor members of local committees do not begin highly skilled. The structure of community action programs against poverty is meant to open opportuni- ties for learning. "Opportunity is the name of the whole game."The real purpose is to try to develop leadership in neighborhoods, to teach people to help themselves, to nurture effective human beings.

Who really represents the poor? This ccmplex question was not answered finally. Cn the one hand, professionals from outside the neighborhood probably do not speak for the residents.Yet representa- tives do not have to make less than $3,000 a year, sine qua non. Per- _ sons who have had better-than-average luck; or more cultural opportuni- ties, may be able to open channels of intercourse between the poor and the powerful. -64- To the charge that the war on poverty is "political," the opinion seemed to be, 'Yes, it is political, "- -in the sense that one impact of the program will be seen at election time and in the whole political process. "Maximum participation" should lead to more responsible and responsive municipal government, helping to offset either the influence ofunrepre- sentative government or of unrepresentative groups pretending to speak for the poor minority. Neighborhood organizations established to deal with poverty will--they already have, in certain cases--concern them- selves with other localized issues like housing, physicalappearance, schools and community services.

The unconvinced in the conference doubted this impact upon the political process. The issue, in brief, is one of how to gain access to decision making. One point of view (often associated with the conflict 1 strategists) contends that access topower can only be acquired by "creat- ing a revolution," which in effect seeks to destroy the status-quo power structure, then reconstruct a more democratic, less rigid structure. A parallel structure may have to be developed, for a period, in order to gain the power to act successfully in this complete restructuring.

A second view (perhaps somewhat related to the collaborative strate- gists) takes a structural modiPication approach. Constant change is necessary, so that the powerless are not "out," but can become at least activists in decision making and thus achieve influence in the urban systems of power and in the continuous revamping of those systems.

Both views were pressed cogently. The present urban decision-making system was seen as perilously unequipped to respond quickly enough in distributing those goods and services reauired to meet all human needs; and the federal war on poverty might only serve to thwart, or "buy off," the poor in their struggle for more participation and a better life.

On the other hand, it was bluntly noted that the minorities compris- ing the poor--especially Negroes--are not numerous enough or strong enough to "bust" the existing structure. The attitude of Negro intellectuals-- "to hell with it, burn the whole damn place down"--simply is not realistic. No single minority has the power to accomplish this.

A middle view also evolved.This suggests that a workable political- social action strategy may be to form alliances, in order-to create either a majority or a stronger minority. Alliances hypothetically are possible among the poor--white and Negro--and such groups and institutions as churches, labor unions, and universities. In combination, these allies could attack poverty and cause real change--if the basic aim is continuous change rather than destruction, if behavior is innovative action rather than reaction, if means and ends are seen as compatible.

While this issue of how much change, and how swiftly, was not resolved, there appeared to be some agreement at certain points. First, valid representation of the poor is desirable, attainable, and a necessity in

-65- Choosing programs toerase poverty as a sickness in the urban center. Feeling "ownership" of suchprograms is important. How to obtain this participation, who is trulyrepresentative of thepoor, and attaining access and influence in decision making forwhat ends?--are Questions probably with,a fairly long lifeahead in American society.

A second consensual pointwas that whatever the structure--anew one or the old reoriented--it must becomemore sensitive to the nature of urban life and respond Quickly,humanely, and effectively to changing human needs and expectations.

A concluding notationwas that moral questions inherent incommunity action strategies, including actionagainst poverty, were hardly touched by the conference. These Questions seem difficult toconfront, since they tend to be framed by thoseholding power--the urban "establishment." Thus, they may be the wrong Questionsaltogether. The conferees did not auite reach the point of openlyrephrasing the auestions--though these were in the minds of many. 8. IMPROVING URBAN DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES

Only three sessions remained to turn attention from the theoretical concepts developed during the first days, frcm the diagnosis of process issues in participant communities--especially with respect to civil rights and the war against poverty--and ri-om the exploration of collaborative- conflict strategies of action--to an attempt to consolidate findings and press toward concrete recommendations for improving approaches to'urban change.

Edward Moe began the Thursday afternoon session by summarizing some major ideas developed in the conference to that point, and by indicating the direction for a creative "mix" of those ideas with the insights of the participants He recalled Bebout and Bredemeier's question about the ade- quacy of the formal legal structure within which decisions can be madeand the four mechanisms by which social systems accommodate to each other: coercive, bargaining, legalistic, and identification.Moe also reviewed the three questions raised by Freeman: What is la leader? How does leader- ship operate? How do people participate in the decision-making process? And the four different kinds of factors listed by Freeman: The people crucially involved in a community decision, the social activity of those who participated, the kind of position they held, and their reputation for leadership. The only place where there could be found a great deal of overlap in these four factors was between the positional fact and the reputational factor.

Moe referred to Banfield's discussion of the fragmentation in America of formal legal authority for making decisions and of the informal concen- tration of authority which has still made the whole thing work. However, in the past 25 to 50 years the relationships between the formal fragmen- tation and informal concentration of power have been changing. There is a real question whether urban areas are now equipped to deal with the problems that confront them.

Moe also touched lightly upon the force field method for analyzing the uneasy balance of dynamic factors involved in individual and social change, the rational-technical and social process (human) dimensions which converge or countervail in decision making, and the time phases in problem solving.

The task now was to clarify and strengthen the concepts "we already have."The staff had compiled a brief written statement which covered some of the "salient considerations" in urban decisionmaking. This was presented to participants as a beginning point, a "sort of word graph," around which to construct an instrument for working for urban develop- ment.

The four Work Groups took the staff statement into their sessions for critical response, and as a base to build upon.The final document is not, strictly speaking, a consensual product from the deliberations

-67- of more than 40 people. As it appears below, nonetheless, it represents in shorthand form much of the synthesis emerging from the work of the participants and staff. However incomplete, it rivets attention on certain significant components and continua in the process of making choices for the future of our cities.

Salient Considerations in Understanding Decision. Making

A. Types of decisions: ,* 1. 'Administered; !Non Administered'

made by Boards, Commissions, individual decisions made Councils, and other public by persons or organizations, or private bodies which add up to "things taking their course."

2. 4Formal legal No formal legal 'structure for structures for !decision making decision making.

Examples are City Council, Decision made by temporary Health and Welfare Council, "coalition" or simply by Planning Commission, etc. negotiatior among principal parties.

3. Centralized !Decentralized'

Authority lAuthority I

Decision-making process Decision making process concentrated in a few dispersed among numerous persons or organizations. persons or organizations.

4. 'Public

Decision making open to Closed decisions made by public--newspaper report- private organizations, ers, citizen attendance, business, other groups of etc. select and limited membership.

B. The configuration of individuals and organizations which are usual parties to decision making on various types of issues; e.g., city planning, culture-arts, civil rights, etc.

C. Types of roles played by individuals or organizations in process of decision making:

LEpP Institutional leaders IEffectord iVoluntary organization leaders

Heads of leading companies, Those actually in- Active members--often officers banks; political, educa- volved in decision or board members of voluntary tional, religious organi- making--often in a organizations, usually with zations subordinate relation less power base than the to top institutional other types of leaders. leaders -68- IOW

11-J

L D. Process and strategic considerations

1. Rational -technicsll. Social process considerations considerations

How and in what sequence arc the rational-technical and the social process aspects of thedecision making considered?

2. kriving" forces' "Restraining" forces

Forces working for the Forces working against particular change goal the particular change goal

3. Coercion-1 Collaboration-1 conflict IBargainin--- Legalistic ---identification

What kinds of mechanismsor strategies are used in the decision process?

4. The extent to which the issue iscontested, or a subject of controversy:

iNotcontested! iContestedi

Basic agreement on issue, Disagreement on issue, with no serious opposition opposition to proposed change

5. How and by whom the problem-solvingfunctions are performed:

a) Awareness of problem. b) Becoming familiar with problem anddefining it. c) Considering alternatives. d) Deciding on a course of action. e) Effecting the course of action.

(Thissequence of functions can also be checked againstseveral of the earlier items.)

6 Who participates early and whoparticipates late?

fTTI

In the formulation In the selection or of the alre7n.avel rejection of alternatives

-69- E. Orientation of decision-makers

triOnoilmwrir.m.=miwp Private regarding. Public regarding: oriented toward oriented toward th self-interest public interest

a) Orientation of those making the decisions.

b) Consideration of interests of those affected by the decisions.

c) Manner in which the decision is presented to the public (appealing to self-interest or public interest).

With the conference drawing to a close, the staff drew up tentative guidelines. These were presented by Roland Warren, with the admonition that the initial list be viewed as suggestive. The conferees dissected the initial suggestions in their Work Groups. Their additions and revisions are blended below with the original staff ideas, to form the essence of joint conference thinking about future directions in approaching the task of solving urban problems. These guidelines, stimulative rather than con- clusive, may provide some organic benchmarks to measure the "models" which urban decision-makers may reconstruct.

Improving Urban Decision Making: Some Suggested Approaches

1. Some greater emphasis on the public-regard aspect (without exclud- ing private interests) to assure attention to both the interests of the people affected by the decisions, and the interests of the public at large. Criteria to measure these interests can include predictable long-range vs. short-range outcomes, breadth of the base of needs to be met, and ethical and moral issues involved.

2. Improving the communication processes among those involved in making decisions--the institutional heads, the effectors and the activists (voluntary organization leaders)--to assure consideration of relevant ideas, feelings and interests. This includes increasing each individual's sensitivity to, and understanding of, his specific role and his personal motives in each decision.

3. Increased emphasis on reconciling or compromising different interests through the sophisticated use of collaborative strategies. Building some form of continuing means to encourage conflict account- ability among the decision-makers.

4. InCreased access, and improved means of access, to decision- making processes for people when they are concerned about issues or the

70 public interest, and when they feel their private interests are threatened. Permitting entrance to the process early, not at the point where they can only ratify decisions previously made by an elite group.Broadening in- volvement to include the very controversial and underadvantaged segments as well as the uncontroversial and overadvantaged.

5. More adequate emphasis on both rational-technical and social process dimensions in decision making, and continued development of con- ceptual models to be used in action strategies.These need to be tested by periodic critical re-examination.

6. Greater concern about increasing understanding and trust among the parties immediately involved, and within the community at large, as a product of the processes used and the decisions made.

7. Enhanced educational and material gains from participation in decision-making processes, as a significant way to expand the ability of people to cope with the problems in a complex urban society, and in order that they can more adequately evolve and achieve objectives and goals relevant to their lives.

8. Training for urban decision-makers.Through training develop the capacity of decision-making groups to be creatively unsure, rather than frozenly cautious; help people to accept and recognize the boundaries of their knowledge, skill, access to and leverage in major change trends; help people to accept responsibility for intervening at crucial points and adapt optimally to community change--doing their best within the limits of the situation. The universities, National Training Laboratories, and other educational agencies can act as catalytic "adult educators" by bringing together decision-makers for training in local metropolitan areas, by training more indigenous nonprofessionals and by using the city itself as a training center through field trips and other first-hand experiences.

Each of the Work Groups contributed to these suggested approaches. One went further. Its members drew a linear model which proposes a possible time emphasis for the above criteria. Condensed in form, it appears thus:

1) public aspect 2) communication 8) training

3) compromise BETTER URBAN DECISIONS 5)rational-social 6) trust 4) broader access 7) enhanced gains

Another Work Groupfinished its contribution by suggesting this common- sense tactic: "Examinethe decision making process, get the data, know who is involved and pick upthe phone!" This implies that each participant is- or can be--part of hiscommunity's decision-making structure. -71- bJ

9. LOOKING HOMEWARD

After the coffee break the last morning, the teams of participants from various communities met to take stock and to set directions for application of new learnings and change. insights.

High points from these discussions were shared with the conference n as a whole. To take one example, Community Team "A" identified two great assets within its back-home situation as (1) the city's rich academic resources, and (2) an existing decision-making structure which permits access to power centers. The members chose as their first target back home the school integration issue; their team decided to serve as the task force to work on this problem. They planned to elicit the help of skilled strategists, and to try to widen the base of participation by recruiting a greater number of "effector types" of decision-makers in working on the problem.

The second task was to conduct a local decision-making conference involving a substantial segment of the community leadership, aiming to build teams around each one of these leaders. In the projected conference the leaders and their teams would identify resources to help with relevant concerns. These action-oriented groups, in addition, would receive prac- tical training on how to define and achieve their objectives.

Most other community team reports echoed two themes of Team "A's" report: a desire to increase use of academic resources within their metropolitan areas and to increase training opportunities for urban effectors and activists in the various agencies and segments of urban life. Some hoped to developa training' program for a large geographic region while others wanted to concentrate within the metropolis itself. One team expressed hope that some of the training technologies used in this Urban Decision-Making Conference 'could be adapted by a local confer- ence design committee. Another wanted the War on Poverty staff back home to engage in sensitivity training, and the Poverty policy board to seek to n raise its horizons through some form of educational experience.

One team stressed that the forces molding urban decisions stem from groups and their interests, rather than from individuals alone. Recog- nizing this same principle, still another community team decided to further develop its own group cohesion so that it could be a more cogent influence for change in its city.

Another team planned to meet as a group back in its community in order to evaluate more carefully the impact of this conference on its members. From the assessment they will develop a plan to expand their membership so that they can more effectively formulate realistic goals. A high priority item for them later would be to consider an ongoing relationship with the National Training Laboratories.

Some community team reports were not as explicit as others in their recognition of themselves as a newly-formed group with deep concerns about urban life, who could return to their separate communities as a force thrusting toward more rational control of change. However, each team saw some potent .al for forming such groups.

-72-

. One team, particularly, suggested that NTL ought to hold a continuing dialogue with conference participants. It also proposed that the Urban Decision-Making Conference pass beyond the experimental stage, to become an annual event at Bethel, Maine(where many human relations, community leadership and other laboratories are held), or elsewhere. NTL was seen as the organization operating at the national level which is in a position to establish an interchange with Urban Studies Centers and similar university programs. It can communicate with the "community of scholars" in order to help determine the areas of needed research, to improve means of making research known and significant to practitioners in cities- - thereby stimulating inter-university approaches to improving decision making. Finally, NTL was urged to serve increasingly as a stimulus for academic interaction with federal and municipal structures. To attempt to meet any, some or all of these objectives, it was recognized that NTL would need substantial foundation support in order to provide staff and other resources.

The final task of the participants was completing individual assess- ments of the impact of the conference. Responses to open-end items of a questionnaire gave the impression that many specific ideas and activities in the conference were helpful to some participants; while for others these were frequently disquieting. 1/

To illustrate, one participant wrote: "This has aided in pointing a direction. Please note that I do not feel that the conference 'exceeded expectations' in most particulars, or 'met expectations' in many par- ticulars; but still, it was very profitable to me in receiving greater understanding of the challenges, and better perception of what steps need to be taken at home."

A second said he and two others had shared a "Gestalt" kind of learn- ing. "It turns out that all of us have a common problem, which is risking something! My risk is confronting head-on the top poverty decision maker in our city. For one of the others, his risk is to go ahead with his research project before every angle has been pinned down in order to eliminate the possibility of error.And for the third, his risk is invest- ing the time it will take really to understand the decision-making process in his community before going into action on a youth program. Each of us has to risk, to take a chance."

Another participant felt that "I honestly cannot pick out specifics. My feeling is that I have picked up a lot of pieces to a puzzle and must now put them together." Still on the same theme: "I have received a broad basis which has placed some of my problems in better perspective. I sought a broad working model which I could use as a point of reference, or point of departure, or as an 'ideal type.' I have received parts of this model but not the whole."

1/ Asummary of tabulations of scaled items in the questionnaire appear in Appendix B. Donald Klein analyzes participant expectations against outcomes. The findings--developed in more detail= -not surprisingly tend to parallel the open-end responses. -73- A vague dissatisfaction on the part of conferees indicated that the golden key to total knowledge or wisdom or consummate professional skill was not in the possession of any who left the conference in Chicago. This reaction was heard in corridors or at the dinner table. A few verbalized their disquiet in their evaluations, as well.Wrote one:

"Social-behavioral science, as focused on the procesS of planned change and urban decision making, is peculiarly vulnerable to preemption by groups with authoritarian perspectives. The humanistic interpretation of the decision making process is not inherent in, or intrinsic to, the process itself--and will not become a guiding force in the process until a new public philosophy or world view for an urban age is devised."

Still another found himself "seriously questioning the universityas an educational institution in an urban age--now more than he had prior to the conference."

A third participant felt he had gained little insight for "influencing my community." A fourth said, "My major disappointment--I expected to look more into the urban decision-maker, how he operates and how he can be reached, influenced or even educated."In this participant's view, "the theory outweighed the pragmatic approach."

Yet it was also evident that untabulated individual learning occurred well beyond that planned specifically by the staff--or beyond the parameters of this report. Participants and staff spent long days.talking withone another. They met in Work Groups, in Community Teams, in pairs and trios at mealtime. They clustered in the Chicago Room--the community center of the conference--before dinner and after hours. Here ideas were dissected, hypotheses launched, and fears-dreams and means-ends shared.

Several testified in their evaluations to the importance of this sharing. Value was placed upon:

"Those informal confrontations with people of differing styles of operating and viewpoints."

"The 'after hours' discussions with people whose thinking differed radically from mine."

"Meeting people, discussing their problems and checking for similari- ties and differences in techniques to force a specific decision, then attempting to find reasons for that difference."

"Informal discussions at lunch, walks with other members when discus- sions of conference issues became blended with non-conference concerns; e.g., homes, wives, office relationships, children, church, friends, and so forth. Until these seemingly extraneous elements are woven into the consideration of new intellectual concepts, the process of planned change is an abstraction." Still, the golden key--the ultimate model for utopian urban decision making--was not provided or devised. Perhaps the key to improving urban life will never be found in a single event, or an isolated conference, but rather from moving along a twisting path..

The possibility that solutions may come only after a major reorienta- tion of cultural assumptions and methods began to nudge several in the conference. The clearest voice on the inadequacy of present knowledge and practice came from a participant from another culture. He wrote:

"I want to comment (about) the general attitude cf detachment in rela- tionship to the ethical and moral considerations which permeated various discussions.... I found that decisions were taken and suggestions made without even taking the trouble to mention how things should be doneor what the moral consequences of doing them would be. Of course I know that we have to deal with reality, as crude as it is, but that does not mean at any level that it cannot be changed at least in some degree.... I believe that the city planners and decision makers must conduct themselves by following certain value premises as to what the society considers to be the 'desirable'.... I received the impression that Americen planners and the top decision-makers work exclusively upon economic-materialistic or political criteria. The emphasis was constantly placed on buildings, economic interests of bankers, political maneuvering as vote-seekers, etc.... And even the racial problems were discussed, in general,as an anti-poverty, governmental project. Is this all there is to it?"

His misgivings were echoed. "The conference has reinforced my belief that we need to take a whole new look at our urban areas and devise entirely new ways of analysis, presentation, and effectuation," declared one participant.

"This points out that substantial and essential modification in thinking about social, religious, economic, democratic, and cultural goals is vital," said another.

And still another believed that "the value systems underlying urban decision making are frightening and relatively unexplored."

If war and peace begin in the hearts and minds of men, as stated in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, then perhapsa significant step occurred at this experimental Urban Decision Making Conference.From it came people emotionally and intellectually dissatisfied with current arrangements, impatient with "the past as described by Dr. Banfield" (although his datawere collected only a few years before, in chronological time).

The first sign of the new arrangements may be these participants them- selves, who began to shake off traditional attitudes andanswers, seek out

-75- new directions, reauest more accurate and specific information, adopt a more rational and measured approach responsible and responsive to a broader base of people; who left the conference withmore Questions than when they came, some never asked before.This group saw ways to develop new relationships in many segments of society--between the church and the deprived, the universities and citizens hungry touse knowledge; between all levels of government and the clamoring needs ofa bursting urban, industrial, technological age.

In departing the conference not quite fulfilled, many may not have realized that they, themselves, are a new breed of decision-makers, committed to a more inclusive democracy of wider representation and opportunity, to a more civilited future for our cities. Some left per- haps not wholly realizing that the most dynamic key to that future they carry within themselves.

Still, a few sensed this. One departing participant felt she was "more deeply committed to securing ways in which the presently disenfran- chised and underrepresented people may participate in the decisionswhich affect them." A second believed that "this work-conference helpedme a lot in improving what might be calledmy 'community conscience'- -that` rather undefined feeling or sentiment by whichone comes to be conscious about the 'we' feeling with the communityas an entity. This is a kind of introjection that, if properly developed,can be highly valuable toward the betterment of our respective communities."

Inevitably, all took leave from this week's freedom from normal responsibilities, departed this reflective retreat and turnedaway from the overview. All left the conference center to return to his respective path in scattered cities, to work again at whatcan be done to improve the quality of decision making--whichso fatefully affects the quality of life in our urban centers. 4

-76- A .4 ov."0 .

REFERENCES

Banfield, E. C., Political influence. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 19617------

Bredemeier, H., & Toby, J. §.22111Problems in America. New York: Wiley, 1960.

Gulick L The metropolitan problem and American ideas. New York; Knopf, mn =. ..

Hayworth, L. The good city. Bloomington: Indiana Univer. Press, 1963.

Herber, L. Crisis in our cities Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall,1965.

Homans, G. Social behavior: Its elementary forms. New York: Harcourt, Brace& World,7767---

Huxley, A. Brave new world. New York: Harper, 1932. MININ=Mi INIMINIMMOMMINM

rlant, J. Personality and the culture pattern.New York: Oxford Univer. Press, 1932,

Steffens, L. The shame of the cities. New York: Hill & Wang, 1957..

-77- ti L_J C71 CIA L,3 tni c7-1 r7.1. r71 APPENDIX A ri P -*411 INNE an MI MN ININI Oft milt Friday Saturday THE CONFERENCE SCHEDULE (November 5-12, 1965) 1 7:30-9:00 Breakfast Sunday Monday Social"The System"City As a Changing The10:00 "UrbanSyracuse General Decision Case" Session Making & I- The "UrbanChicago Decision Case" Making II- 10:3010:00 General Coffee9:00 Session General & Session & Work Groups 11:1510:45 GeneralCoffee Session: PresentationWork Groups by 9:459:00 General Session:Session and WorkPresentation Groups by 12:30 Lunch Work Group Reading Linton Freeman 11:0010:30 CoffeeGeneral Discussion Edward Banfield 3:002:00 GeneralWork Groups Session: DiscussionGroup Reports & 3:302:00 GeneralWork Groups Session: Group(Coffee Reports atavailable 2:45 p.m.) 3:302:003:00 GeneralWork Coffee Groups Session: Group reports and 6:30-7:45 Dinner 5:004:00 AdjournReading Period, Dinner 4 5:00 Adjourn and Discussion 4:30 Adjourn Discussion "Changingoverviewand Conference Nature of 6 :30 "Applying the Theory Work Groups 9:008:158:oothe City"GeneralCommunity Sessions: Panel Session Teams Free 8:008:15to Back Community Home" General Session Teams 8:00 1 9:30 Adjourn APPENDIX Tuesday Wednesday URBAN DECISION MAKING CONFERENCE (Cont.) Thursday Friday Page 2 A 7:30-9:00Dimensions &Breakfast Social"Rational-Technical inProcess i MakingAnalysis9:00- CasesWork of Decision-Groups:(Cont,d) 9:309:00 General Special Session: Interest Sessions Making"Improving Processes" Urban Decision- 9:00 General SessionDecision Making" Film: "How Things 11:0010:30 WorkCoffee Groups 10:15 Coffee DiscussionsReportsSpecial andInterest 10:15"Next Coffee Steps"9:159:00 WorkGeneral Groups Session L10:30 12:3010:00Work GroupsCoffeeLunch Get Done" 10:45 Reports and Dis- cussion (Cont'd) 11:3010:45 CommunityClosing Session Teams 2:302:00 WorkCoffee Groups__ CasesParticipantAnalysis of Free , 2:00in "SalientUrban General Decision Considerations Session Making" 517111 3:00 Work Grou.s Dinner 8:00 Special Interest Sessions 8:003:152:45 General WorkCoffee Groups Session: Work Group B.DecisionStrategiesA. Making in CollaborativeConflict Reports Free DecisionmentFeasible&C. the of 'Maximum Makingthe Involve- Poor" Poverty Programs 111111 OM 11111 MUM MN IM4 [WM II1 AM NW MO MN NMI IIIIII 111111 APPENDIX B

CONFERENCE OUTCOMES IN TERMS OF PARTICIPANTS' EXPECTATIONS

by Donald Klein

A conference such as UDMC takes place at the turbulent confluence of strong currents representing the hopes, aspirations, and needs of its planners and participants.

In order to tap some of these currents, each conferee was asked at the outset to note in writing specific outcomes which, if achieved at the con- ference, would make it a success for him. At the end of the conference these statements of pre-conference expectations were returned to each par- ticipant, who then indicated whether the expectation still applied and, if so, was exceeded, met satisfactorily, or not met. Twenty -six rating sheets for pre-conference expectations were returned in scorable condition. Table 1 summarizes the results in terms of number of expectations per individual, and number and per cent of expectations "not met," "met," and "exceeded."

All but four of the 26 participants listed three or four expectations apiece. Of those expectations which were applicable and could be scored (78 of 88), almost two thirds (64%)were considered to have been "met" or "exceeded."

Table 1: Outcome Ratings of Pre.-Conference Expectations Presented According to Number. of Expectations Listed per Person.

Number of No. No Expectations of Longer Not Exceed- Unscor- Total Per Person Pers. Applies Met Met ed able

1 1 1 1 2 2 4 4 3 10 2 9 13 2 4 30

4 . 12 2 19 17 8 2 48 5 1 1 3 1 5

Total 26 il- 29 38 11 6 88 N-78 % of 78 37% 49% 14

A similar procedure was carried out at mid-conference. Expectations were collected from participants on Tuesday morning and these sheets, too, were rated as to outcomes at the close of the conference. Twenty-two sheets were returned in scorable condition. They contained 60 expecta- tfons, 54 of which were rated as to outcome (Table 2). Over two-thirds (70%) of these latterwere rated as "met" or "exceeded." APPENDIX B Page 2

Table 2: Outcome Ratings of Mid-ConferenceExpectationS Presented According to Number of ExpectationsListed Per Person.

Number of No. No Expectations of Longer Not Exceed- Unscor- Per Person Pers. Applies Met Met ed able Total II 1 1 1 1 2 7 1 14. 8 1 14 3 11 1 9 18 2 3. 33 II 4 3 3 14. 5 12

Total 22 2 16 31 7 4 60 11 N-54 % of 54 30% 57% 13% 11 Individuals' pre-conference expectations werepooled by the end of the sessions to develop a check list of 32 expectationswhich, in the staff's judgment, represented the varied, and in some instancesconflicting, needs and anticipations of the conferees.The Expectations Check List was filled out by 31 participants at the conclusion of theconference. Each was asked had high or low relevance for to indicate for every expectation whether it I 1 him and whether it was "not met," "met," or"exceeded" during the sessions. The expectations, listed below, give anexcellent indication of the diversity of needs and objectives contained within theconference.

End-Of-Conference Expectations Check List li j

1. To better understand the decision-making process.

2. To identify who are the urban decision-makers anddevelop greater il sensitivity to the roles of different groups indecision making.

3. To develop an applicable model or theory of urbandecision making. I

4. To gain better insight into the components andoperational dynamics of power. I 5 To get help on how to translate theoryeffectively into the realm of practical politics.

6. To learn methods of decision making.

7. To better understand the means by which urbandecision making may I be improved. 8 To become more effective in assuring that properdecisions are made. I To become skilled in the planning process. I

Jr APPEIJDIX B Page 3

10. To identify who are the urban decision-makers and to learn what methods may be used to discover them.

11. To find out what is the "psychology" of persons who make decisions in their cities.

12. To establish proper relationship between citizens and government agencies in decision making.

13. To become better able to relate community decisions to the total good,

14. To gain an understanding through shared experience of other communities' problems and procedures.

15. To secure operational relationships between those engaged in urban decision making without reducing creative tension between them,

16 To develop the sensitivity to deal with people and still get the job done.

17 To develop some human relations tools for better communication.

18. To find for myself a direction and focus for my concern with the development of human resources.

19. To become more effective in influencing decisions in my community.

20. To see what changes are occurring in community power structure.

21. To gain insights into methods being used by least-represented groups to gain a voice in community decisions.

22. To evaluate my personal role as a worker in the urban area.

23. To gain a clearer understanding of the role played by my organi- zation in urban decisions.

24. To become better able to help others be more sensitive to the needs.' of all interests in the community.

25. To become better able to direct my organization toward more effective work in the community.

26.. To learn how the group processes experienced here can be replicated in urban decision making back home.

27. To get a team from my own region here as a possible nucleus for further efforts back home.

1.11,- APPENDIX B Page 4

28. To learn the NTL training method.

29. To have the opportunity to meet some leading theorists and practitioners in the community field.

30. To hear as much as possible about decision-making experiences in the metropolitan areas represented.

31. To loam how to improve the calibre of those who run for public office.

32. To gather bibliographic references in the field of urban affairs.

Responses to the check list indicate which expectations were highly relevant for most participants.They also suggest which of the highly relevant expectations the conferees felt were most satisfactorily achieved when they left the Center for Continuing Education.

.1 APPENDIX B .Page 5

Table 3: Outcome Ratings on Expectations Check List for Conference Participants (N - 31) Presented According to High or Low Relevance of Expectations.

High Relevance Low Relevance Blank

Expec- Did not Exceed- Did not Exceed- tation meet Met ed meet Met ed

1 4 23 4 0 0 0 0 2 9 13 3 0 4 1 1 3 12 11 0 3 3 0 2 4 11 10 2 3. 0 1 4 5 12 6 4 3 2 0 4 6 6 19 1 1 2 0 3 7 6 15 3 1 0 1 5 8 15 7 1 3 0 0 5 9 7 7 2 3 2 0 10 10 5 19 2 3 2 0 0 11 9 5 3 5 2 1 6 12 11 11 1 2 2 0 4 13 11 11 1 3 1 0 4 14 4 14 11 0 1 1 0 15 6 11 1 5 2 0 6 16 5 12 3 3 1 1 6 17 6 10 4 1 2 0 8 18 6 9 5 1 1 0 9 19 8 15 2 0 1 0 5 20 10 9 4 0 2 0 6 21 6 8 9 1 2 2 3 22 4 12 4 3 3 9 5 23 5 12 5 3 2 1 3 24 5 15 4 1 1 1 3 25 4 19 3 0 1 0 4 26 8 12 4 1 2 1 3 27 5 13 4 3 1 0 5 28 4 14 2 1 5 0 5 29 2 15 9 0 2 1 2 30 10 12 4 2 3 0 0 31 11 2 1 7 1 0 9 32 10 6 2 1 2 0 10

It is apparent (Table 3) that certain expectations, such asitems 1, 2, 3, and 5, were far more relevant than others.Table 4 gives the fre- quency distribution of relevanceaccording to the number of items viewed as highly relevant by different numbersof conferees. APPENDIX B Page 6

Table 1.: Disti.ibution of Relevance According to Number of Items Considered of High Relevance by Different Numbers of Conferees.

No of People No. of Items Rating Item Rated as High Relevance 13-15 1 16-18 4 19-21 6 22-24 25-27 6 21 28-30 31 1

Since two-thirds of the items (21 of 32) were considered highly rele- vant by two-thirds or more of the conferees, an evaluation of the confer- ence should pay special attention towhether these 21 expectations were met or exceeded. ks an aid to future planning it seems important to use the check list to determine what areas of apparent need were not met'by this first effort.

The breakdown of high relevance expectations according towhether participants rated them as "met" or "exceeded" reveals that a low propor- tion of positive responses (59% orless) was given to six items:

Item 8 - To become more effective in assuringthat proper decisions are made. Item 4 - To gain better insight into the componentsand operational dynamics of power. Item 5 - To get help on how to translate theoryeffectively into the realm of practical politics. Item 3 - To develop an applicable model ortheory of urban decision making. Item 12 - To establish proper relationship betweencitizens and government agencies in decision, making Item 13 - To become better able to relatecommunity decisions to the total good.

Apparently the six items represent areas in which theconference definitely missed the mark for many participants. The expectations appear to reflect three areas. Two of them are closely related and have to do with (1) knowledge of and competence within politics,and (2) the use of power to ensure that desireddecisions are achieved; (3) one reflects the hope that the conference might succeed in integratingcommunity theory and practice into an over-all model for urbandecision making that could be applied to everyday situations in the realworld. 1

APPENDIX B Page 7

Table 5: Per cent of High Relevance Expectations Rated as "Met" or "Exceeded" by 1.1DMC Participants (N - 31)

Category Percent Numbc' of Items List of Items 30-39 1 40-49 2 4,5 50-59 3 3,12,13 0- 9 5 2,10,20,2.,30 70-79 5 ,7,19,21,30 80-89 4 1,14,24,25 90-99 1 29

On the more positive side, ten of the high-relevance expectations were considered to have been met or exceeded by most of the conferees (70% or more). Apparently the conference was fairly successful in rela- tion to those ten expectations, which were:

Item 6 - To learn methods ofdecision making. Item 7 - To betterunderstand the means by which urban decision making may be improved. Item 19 - To become more effective in influencing decisions in my community. Item 21 - To gain insights into methods being used by least repre- sented groups to.gain a voice in community decisions. Item 23 - To gain a clearer understanding of the role played by my organization in urban decisions. Item 1 - To betterunderstand the decision-making process. Item 14 - To gain an understanding through shared experiences of other communities' problems and procedures. Item 24 - To become better able to help others be more sensitive to the needs of all interests in the community. Item 25 -To become better able to direct my organization toward more effective work in the community. Item 29 - To have the opportunity to meet some leading theorists and practitioners in the community field.

From the content of these ten items, it would appear(1) that partici- pants were pleased with the opportunity to meet with a variety, of theoreticians and community practitioners and to share insights and experiences across com- munity lines; (2) the conference met the expectations of those who came seek- ing to understand more about the theory and practice of decision making and who hoped to add to their effectiveness and that of their organizations in influencing decisions in their own communities; and (3) that conferees felt they did indeed gain awareness of the needs and approaches of the many interests caught up in community decisions, most especially those of the groups who historically have been least able to exercise power and influence on the urban scene. APPENDIX C Page 1

APPENDIX C

Planning for Learning-- Afterthoughts on the Conference

The central thread in the main body ofthis report has been the "Findings from a Conference."Some readers, nonetheless,may wonder about the trainingprocess itself and some of the issues encountered.

The authors (one of whom was not at the conference)do not see it as our task to describe the conference training designin detail, or to develop a rationale for it. In any case, the reader of the reporthopefully has been able to follow in rough outline thevarious teaching-learning methods employed, as well as the flow ofcontent. Perhaps more pertinent here is a brief estimate of how well did the designseem to work,.

From the participants we receive certainclues from their final eval- uations of diverse parts of theprogram. Those who said they gained from the presentations of Professors Freemanand Banfield outnumbered negative reactions three to one. Other "expert" presentations from staffmembers and panels met with only slightlyless heavy majority favor. The Work. Groups were mentioned more often thanany other single conference activity, again with three conferees findingthe groups of worth to eachone who did not. Only the Community Teamswere more disliked than liked, nine to two. More than half the participants reportedenthusiasm for the time spent in off-hours informally talking toothers. Only two or three verbally be- grudged the half-hour coffee breaksor other "free" time.

Yet running through both staff and participantcomments is a coloration of disquiet, a feeling of not quitereaching the pure gold of learning achievement.liIn one sense, this flows from differingexpectations. Some participants were hoping fora more traditional human relations or community leadership laboratory where central attentionis placed upon personal and group behavior, and their impact upon the social environment. Others were seeking a high altitude cognitive vista fromwhich the latest, most abstract model of urban decision making couldbe comprehensively understood.And some were in between these polar points. The staff, too, differed along these same dimensions.

Herein lies an issue, or a cluster of issues,emerging from the conference:

How can social science theory be blended withthe functional behavior of people dealing with the metroplex?

How can the conceptual and the experiential,as well as the ideal and, the real, become more congruent for the communityvolunteer and the professional?

1/ See also Chapter 9 andAppendix B. APPENDIX C Page 2

How can laboratory trainers make the myriad relationships of thecity come to life in a conference setting, where they can be examined and ob- served and reexamined, as can the relationships in the face-to-facetrain- ing group--or even the contacts between training groups?

How can behavior modified within the training environment be trans- ferred to the arena of the city and the role of decision-maker?

How can an intellectual-leaning staff determine a cerebral altitude which satisfies them and also allows the participants to fly alongside?

The training staff of the conference sharpened these issues, rather than resolved them. We attempted to bring relevant theory to bear, yet the theory at times did not fit the perceived needs of the participants, or it came in blocks too big to bite. We scheduled periods for mutual participant learning, yet at times found ourselves controlling the content of discussion by "piping" the agenda into the Work Groups through mimeo- graphed guides. We sought to provide useful analytical instruments, and often ran out of time in which to master them. We intended to encourage the probing of affective or feeling components (suchas group loyalty, trust, suspicion, authority-freedom responses, self-worth, fear), yet at times saw the generaliiation or the problem back home employedas safe shields to maintain a gentlemanly level of conversation- -but without much fire, Anxious for the conference to succeed, at times we pressed too quickly for a new learning plateau. At times--but not always. As the report itself reflects, there were moments when feeling and knowing became one.

There were successful efforts by participants not only to digest great hunks of theory but also to make it work for themselves. There were periods of genuine creativeness, when a "conference of peers" was truly thrusting beyond the mapped terrain to diagram fresh understanding of and fresh approaches to the city and its decisions.Aggregates of individuals from two or three urban centers began to grow into teams with the potential motive energy to influence the social processes of their communities.

Put another way, the training staff was experimenting. We tried to surmount both the traditional classroom technology of "teaching," and the traditional laboratory technology for "learning." Frequently' we stumbled. Yet pratfalls are probably good for the soul of a trainer. We dial venture; despite the flaws, we finished moderately satisfied, all in all. And we did learn; we know that there is still much to learn about establishing optimum conditions within which the person can gain insight alonga con- tinuum that starts with himself and ends where only society itself ends.

We think we sharpened some important issues for education and educators generally-- including, and especially, ourselves. APPENDIX D

Page 1 .

APPENDIX D

ROSTER OF PARTICIPANTS AND STAFF

Boston, Massachusetts

RevJohn E. Barclay . Mrs. Laurence J. Kipp,President President League of Women Votersof Mass. Boston Council of Churches 517 Massachusetts Ave. 95 Berkley Street Lexington, Mass. (nearBoston)

Dr. Sarah T. Curwood Edward T. Sullivan Human Rights-donsulant Business Agent Massachusetts Committee on Building Service Employees Children and Youth Local 254 AFL-CIO 9 Newbury Street 226 Tremont Street

Rev. W. Seavey Joyce, S. J. Dean College of Business Administration Boston College

Chicago, Illinois

Bruce M Cole Jack, Meltzer, Director Assistant General Secretary Center for Urban Studies for Programs University of Chicago Y.M.0 A. 5852 University Avenue 19 South LaSalle Street

Hayward Hirsch, Director Ashby G. Smith, Jr. Commercial & Community DevelopmentAssistant Director Chicago Association of Commerce Employment and Guidance & Industry Chicago Urban League 30 West Monroe Street 4500 S. Michigan Ave.

Kendall I. Lingle Rev. Douglass M. Still Full-time Layman Volunteer Executive Secretary, Department of 7 South Dearborn Street Social Welfare The Church Federation Of Greater Chicago 116 S. Michigan Ave.

377,7774,.. _ MI

APPENDIX D Page 2

Cincinnati, Ohio

Robert C. Hoover Ruth Searles Professor of Community Planning Assistant Professor of Sociology University of Cincinnati University of Cincinnati 306 Basic Science Bldg.

. Harry T, Martin Executive Director 9 Citizens Committee on Youth 909 Plum Street

Detroit, Michigan

Rev. William S. Logan Robert Roselle, Director Executive Director of Program Mayor's Committee, Diocese of Michigan Total Action Against Poverty 4800 Woodward Avenue 800 Guardian Bldg.

Indianapolis, Indiana

Mrs. David Cook Rev. Edward Smith, Director Citizen Volunteer St. Mary's Child Center 7043 N. Delaware Street 311 N. New Jersey

Los Angeles, California

Marlies Cremer, Consultant Michael H. Salzman, City Planner t National Council of Churches and City Planning Dept. S. California Council of Churches City Hall, Rm. 361 1844 N.'Harvard Blvd, Hollywood (in Los Angeles)

Ocie Pastard Morris Samuel, Director Assistant Director of Community Action Community P,ction Westminster Neighborhood Assoc. Inc. Westminster Neighborhood Assoc. Inc 10125 Beach Street 10125 Beach Street

Rev. Donald E. Roberts United Presbyterian Church 6323 W. 80th St. APPENDIX D Page 3

Midland, Michigan

Rev. Bruce E. Bailey, Vicar Howard Guimond, Executive Director Church of the Holy Family Big Brothers of Midland, Inc. 4701 Swede Rd. 2912 Ashman St.

Newark, New Jersey

Mrs. Rebecca Andrade Assistant to the Director Newark Pre-School Council, Inc. 53-55 Osborne Terrace

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Jitsuo Morikawa Edwin E. Olson Executive Director Senior Study Director Metropolitan Association of National Analysts, Inc. Philadelphia 1015 Chestnut Street 101 S. 13th Street

San Juan,, Puerto Rico

Jose A. Torres-Zayas Professor and Associate Director Social Science Research Center Faculty of the Social Sciences University of Puerto Rico

St. Louis, Missouri

Clement S. Mihanovich Professor of Sociology St. Louis University Police-Community Relations 221 N. Grand Blvd.

Salt Lake City, Utah

D. J. Cannon, General Manager Robert Huefner Pro-Utah, Inc. State Planning Coordinator 143 S. Main St. Governor's Office, State Capital

Morris E. Johnson, Executive DirectorL. Keith Wilson, Director Downtown Planning Association State-Wide Services 1216 Walker Bank Bldg. University of Utah P. O. Box 200 Esther R. Landa Director, Women's Programs Division of Continuing Education University of Utah P. O. Box 200 APPENDIX D Page 4

Syracuse,New York

William H. Bell, Director Social Science Projects Syracuse University Research Syracuse University Collendale Campus-Box 26

STAFF CONSULTANTS

W. C. Dutton, Jr. H. Curtis Mial, Assoc. Director Planning Consultant National Training Laboratories, NEA 6513-41st Ave. 1201-16th Street, N. W. University 'Park, Md. Washington, D. C.

Dr. Richard Franklin, Director Dr. Edward Moe, Director Community Development Institute Inst. of Urban Research & Service Southern Illinois University University of Utah Carbondale, Illinois Salt Lake City, Utah

Dr. Donald Klein, Director Dr. Hans B. C. Spiegel Human Relations Center Deputy Asst. Commissioner for Boston University Relocation & Community Organization, 270 Bay State Road Urban Renewal Administration Boston, Mass. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development 811 Vermont Ave., N. W. Charles P. Livermore Washington, D. C. Executive Director Chicago Commission on Youth Dr. Roland Warren Welfare & Joint Youth Professor of Community Theory Development Committee Florence Heller Grad. Sch. for 185 North Wabash Advanced Studies in Social Welfare Chicago, Illinois Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts

CONTENT CONSULTANTS

Dr. Edward C. Banfield Dr. Linton C. Freeman Department of Government Department of Sociology Harvard University Syracuse University Cambridge, Massachusetts Syracuse, N. Y.

THE LIBRARY OF AUG 2 1967

CONTINUING EDUCATION